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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

AT   LOS  ANGELES 


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PEOGRESS  AND  POVERTY 


Make  for  thjrself  a  definition  or  description  of 
the  thing  which  is  presented  to  thee,  so  as  to  see 
distinctly  what  kind  of  a  thing  it  is,  in  its  sub- 
stance, in  its  nudity,  in  its  complete  entirety,  and 
tell  thyself  its  proper  name,  and  the  names  of  the 
things  of  which  it  has  been  compounded,  and  into 
which  it  will  be  resolved.  For  nothing  is  so  pro- 
ductive of  elevation  of  mind  as  to  be  able  to  ex- 
amine methodically  and  truly  every  object  which 
is  presented  to  thee  in  life,  and  always  to  look  at 
things  so  as  to  see  at  the  same  time  what  kind  of 
universe  this  is,  and  what  kind  of  use  everything 
performs  in  it,  and  what  value  everything  has 
with  reference  to  the  whole,  and  what  with  refer- 
ence to  man,  who  is  a  citizen  of  the  highest  city, 
of  which  all  other  cities  are  like  families ;  what 
each  thing  is,  and  of  what  it  is  composed,  and 
how  long  it  is  the  nature  of  this  thing  to  endure. 
—Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus. 


"r'/'yr 


'■/>/-//   //■/■//////^    .  ■'rf>fj^*'.j^*^f-ftf/  •  /i'tv r/y. 


THE  COMPLETE  WORKS 
OF    HENRY    GEORGE 

PROGRESS  AND 
POVERTY 

AN  INQUIRY  INTO  THE  CAUSE  OF 
INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSIONS  AND  OF 
INCREASE  OF  WANT  WITH  IN- 
CREASE OF  WEALTH 

THE  REMEDY 


NEW  YORK:   DOUBLEDAY 
PAGE  &  COMPANY  5  1904 


Copyright,  1891,  by 
Henbt  George 


i.     ^ 


\.K 


HB 


VyJ 


TO  THOSE  WHO, 

>  SEEING  THE  VICE  AND  MISERY  THAT  SPEINQ  VROU 

©  — "■ 

"*  THEJUSEQUiJt_D^TTBUgB13PI^ 

OP  WEALTH  AND  PRIVILEGE, 
to        FEEL  THE  POSSIBILITY^oFa  HIGHER  SOCIAL  STATE 
^  AND  WOULD  STRIVE  FOR  ITS  ATTAINILENT 


San  Fbancisco,  March,  1878. 


o 
O 


>• 


3 

o 


255950 


There  must  be  refuge !    Men 
Perished  in  winter  winds  till  one  smote  fire 
From  flint  stones  coldly  hiding  what  they  held, 
The  red  spark  treasured  from  the  kindling  sun ; 
They  gorged  on  flesh  like  wolves,  till  one  sowed  com, 
Which  grew  a  weed,  yet  makes  the  life  of  man ; 
They  mowed  and  babbled  till  some  tongue  struck  speech, 
And  patient  fingers  framed  the  lettered  sound. 
What  good  gift  have  my  brothers,  but  it  came 
Prom  search  and  strife  and  loving  sacrifice  f 

Edwin  Arnold. 

Never  yet 
Share  of  Truth  was  vainly  set 
In  the  world's  wide  fallow ; 
After  hands  shall  sow  the  seed, 

After  hands,  from  hill  and  mead, 
Beap  the  harvests  yellow. 

WhitUer. 


PREFACE  TO  FOURTH  EDITION. 


The  views  herein  set  forth  were  in  the  main  briefly  stated  in  a 
pamphlet  entitled  "  Our  Land  and  Land  Policy,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  in  1871.  I  then  intended,  as  soon  as  I  could,  to  present 
them  more  fxilly,  but  the  opportunity  did  not  for  a  long  time  occur. 
In  the  meanwhUe  I  became  even  more  firmly  convinced  of  their 
truth,  and  saw  more  completely  and  clearly  their  relations;  and  I 
also  saw  how  many  false  ideas  and  erroneous  habits  of  thought 
stood  in  the  way  of  their  recognition,  and  how  necessary  it  was  to  go 
over  the  whole  ground. 

This  I  have  here  tried  to  do,  as  thoroughly  as  space  would  permit. 
It  has  been  necessary  for  me  to  clear  away  before  I  could  build  up, 
and  to  write  at  once  for  those  who  have  made  no  previous  study  of 
such  subjects,  and  for  those  who  are  familiar  with  economic  reason- 
ings; and,  so  great  is  the  scope  of  the  argument  that  it  has  been 
impossible  to  treat  with  the  fullness  they  deserve  many  of  the  ques- 
tions raised.  What  I  have  most  endeavored  to  do  is  to  establish 
general  principles,  trusting  to  my  readers  to  carry  further  their 
applications  where  this  is  needed. 

In  certain  respects  this  book  will  be  best  appreciated  by  those  who 
have  some  knowledge  of  economic  literature;  but  no  previous  read- 
ing is  necessary  to  the  understanding  of  the  argument  or  the  passing 
of  judgment  upon  its  conclusions.  The  facts  upon  which  I  have 
relied  are  not  facts  which  can  be  verified  only  by  a  search  through 
libraries.  They  are  facts  of  common  observation  and  common 
knowledge,  which  every  reader  can  verify  for  himself,  just  as  he  can 
decide  whether  the  reasoning  from  them  is  or  is  not  valid. 

Beginning  with  a  brief  statement  of  facts  which  suggest  this  in- 
quiry, I  proceed  to  examine  the  explanation  currently  given  in  the 
name  of  political  economy  of  the  reason  why,  in  spite  of  the  increase 
of  productive  power,  wages  tend  to  the  minimum  of  a  bare  living. 
This  examination  shows  that  the  current  doctrine  of  wages  is  founded 
upon  a  misconception;  that,  in  truth,  wages  are  produced  by  the 
labor  for  which  they  are  paid,  and  should,  other  things  being  equal, 
increase  with  the  number  of  laborers.    Here  the  inquiry  meets  a 


Ylll  PBEFACE. 

doctrine  which  is  the  foundation  and  center  of  most  important 
economic  theories,  and  which  has  powerfully  influenced  thought  in 
all  directions — the  Malthusian  doctrine,  that  population  tends  to 
increase  faster  than  subsistence.  Examination,  however,  shows  that 
this  doctrine  has  no  real  support  either  in  fact  or  in  analogy,  and  that 
when  brought  to  a  decisive  test  it  is  utterly  disproved. 

Thus  far  the  results  of  the  inquiry,  though  extremely  important, 
are  mainly  negative.  They  show  that  current  theories  do  not  satis- 
factorily explain  the  connection  of  poverty  with  material  progress, 
but  throw  no  light  upon  the  problem  itself,  beyond  showing  that  its 
solution  must  be  sought  in  the  laws  which  govern  the  distribution  of 
wealth.  It  therefore  becomes  necessary  to  carry  the  inquiry  into 
this  field.  A  preliminary  review  shows  that  the  three  laws  of  dis- 
tribution must  necessarily  correlate  with  each  other,  which  as  laid 
down  by  the  current  political  economy  they  fail  to  do,  and  an  ex- 
amination of  the  terminology  in  use  reveals  the  confusion  of  thought 
by  which  this  discrepancy  has  been  slurred  over.  Proceeding  then 
to  work  out  the  laws  of  distribution,  I  first  take  up  the  law  of  rent. 
This,  it  is  readily  seen,  is  correctly  apprehended  by  the  current 
political  economy.  But  it  is  also  seen  that  the  full  scope  of  this  law 
has  not  been  appreciated,  and  that  it  involves  as  corollaries  the  laws 
of  wages  and  interest — the  cause  which  determines  what  part  of  the 
produce  shall  go  to  the  land  owner  necessarily  determining  what 
part  shall  be  left  for  labor  and  capital.  Without  resting  here,  I  pro- 
ceed to  an  independent  deduction  of  the  laws  of  interest  and  wages. 
I  have  stopped  to  determine  the  real  cause  and  justification  of  in- 
terest, and  to  point  out  a  source  of  much  misconception — the  con- 
founding of  what  are  really  the  profits  of  monopoly  with  the  legiti- 
mate earnings  of  capital.  Then  returning  to  the  main  inquiry, 
investigation  shows  that  interest  must  rise  and  fall  with  wages,  and 
depends  ultimately  upon  the  same  thing  as  rent — the  margin  of 
cultivation  or  point  in  production  where  rent  begins.  A  similar  but 
independent  investigation  of  the  law  of  wages  yields  similar  har- 
monious results.  Thus  the  three  laws  of  distribution  are  brought 
into  mutual  support  and  harmony,  and  the  fact  that  with  material 
progress  rent  everywhere  advances  is  seen  to  explain  the  fact  that 
wages  and  interest  do  not  advance. 

What  causes  this  advance  of  rent  is  the  next  question  that  arises, 
and  it  necessitates  an  examination  of  the  effect  of  material  progress 
upon  the  distribution  of  wealth.  Separating  the  factors  of  material 
progress  into  increase  of  population  and  improvements  in  the  arts,  it 
is  first  seen  that  increase  in  population  tends  constantly,  not  merely 


FBEFACE.  iX 

by  reducing  the  margin  of  cultivation,  but  by  localizing  the  econ- 
omies and  powers  which  come  with  increased  population,  to  increase 
the  proportion  of  the  aggregate  produce  which  is  taken  in  rent,  and 
to  reduce  that  which  goes  as  wages  and  interest.  Then  eliminating 
increase  of  population,  it  is  seen  that  improvement  in  the  methods 
and  powers  of  production  tends  in  the  same  direction,  and,  land  being 
held  as  private  property,  would  produce  in  a  stationary  population 
all  the  effects  attributed  by  the  Malthusian  doctrine  to  pressure  of 
population.  And  then  a  consideration  of  the  effects  of  the  continuous 
increase  in  land  values  which  thus  spring  from  material  progress 
reveals  in  the  speculative  advance  inevitably  begotten  when  land  is 
private  property  a  derivative  but  most  powerful  cause  of  the  increase 
of  rent  and  the  crowding  down  of  wages.  Deduction  shows  that 
this  cause  must  necessarily  produce  periodical  industrial  depressions, 
and  induction  proves  the  conclusion;  while  from  the  analysis  which 
has  thus  been  made  it  is  seen  that  the  necessary  result  of  material 
progress,  land  being  private  property,  is,  no  matter  what  the  in- 
crease in  population,  to  force  laborers  to  wages  which  give  but  a 
bare  living. 

This  identification  of  the  cause  that  associates  poverty  with  prog- 
ress points  to  the  remedy,  but  it  is  to  so  radical  a  remedy  that  I  have 
next  deemed  it  necessary  to  inquire  whether  there  is  any  other 
remedy.  Beginning  the  investigation  again  from  another  starting 
point,  I  have  passed  in  examination  the  measures  and  tendencies 
currently  advocated  or  trusted  in  for  the  improvement  of  the  condi- 
tion of  the  laboring  masses.  The  result  of  this  investigation  is  to 
prove  the  preceding  one,  as  it  shows  that  nothing  short  of  making 
land  common  property  can  permanently  relieve  poverty  and  check 
the  tendency  of  wages  to  the  starvation  point. 

The  question  of  justice  now  naturally  arises,  and  the  inquiry 
passes  into  the  field  of  ethics.  An  investigation  of  the  nature  and 
basis  of  property  shows  that  there  is  a  fundamental  and  irreconcil- 
able difference  between  property  in  things  which  are  the  product  of 
labor  and  property  in  land;  that  the  one  has  a  natural  basis  and 
sanction  while  the  other  has  none,  and  that  the  recognition  of  ex- 
clusive property  in  land  is  necessarily  a  denial  of  the  right  of  prop- 
erty in  the  products  of  labor.  Further  investigation  shows  that 
private  property  in  land  always  has,  and  always  must,  as  develop- 
ment proceeds,  lead  to  the  enslavement  of  the  laboring  class;  that 
land  owners  can  make  no  just  claim  to  compensation  if  society  choose 
to  resume  its  right;  that  so  far  from  private  property  in  land  being 
in  accordance  with  the  natural  perceptions  of  men,  the  very  reverse 


,-Z  PREFACE. 

!s  true,  and  that  in  the  United  States  we  are  already  beginning  to 
feel  the  effects  of  having  admitted  this  erroneous  and  destructive 
principle. 

The  inquiry  then  passes  to  the  field  of  practical  statesmanship. 
It  is  seen  that  private  property  in  land,  instead  of  being  necessary  to 
its  improvement  and  use,  stands  in  the  way  of  improvement  and  use, 
and  entails  an  enormous  waste  of  productive  forces;  that  the  recog- 
nition of  the  common  right  to  land  involves  no  shock  or  dispossession, 
but  is  to  be  reached  by  the  simple  and  easy  method  of  abolishing 
uU  taxation  save  that  upon  land  values.  And  this  an  inquiry  into 
the  principles  of  taxation  shows  to  be,  in  all  respects,  the  best  subject 
of  taxation. 

A  consideration  of  the  effects  of  the  change  proposed  then  shows 
that  it  would  enormously  increase  production;  would  secure  justice 
in  distribution;  would  benefit  all  classes;  and  would  make  possible 
an  advance  to  a  higher  and  nobler  civilization. 

The  inquiry  now  rises  to  a  wider  field,  and  recommences  from 
another  starting  point.  For  not  only  do  the  hopes  which  have  been 
raised  come  into  collision  with  the  widespread  idea  that  social  prog- 
ress is  possible  only  by  slow  race  improvement,  but  the  conclusions 
we  have  arrived  at  assert  certain  laws  which,  if  they  are  really  nat- 
ural laws,  must  be  manifest  in  universal  history.  As  a  final  test,  it 
therefore  becomes  necessary  to  work  out  the  law  of  human  progress, 
for  certain  great  facts  which  force  themselves  on  our  attention,  as 
soon  as  we  begin  to  consider  this  subject,  seem  utterly  inconsistent 
with  what  is  now  the  current  theory.  This  inquiry  shows  that  dif- 
ferences in  civilization  are  not  due  to  differences  in  individuals,  but 
rather  to  differences  in  social  organization ;  that  progress,  always 
kindled  by  association,  always  passes  into  retrogression  as  inequality 
is  developed;  and  that  even  now,  in  modern  civilization,  the  causes 
which  have  destroyed  all  previous  civilizations  are  beginning  to 
manifest  themselves,  and  that  mere  political  democracy  is  running 
its  course  toward  anarchy  and  despotism.  But  it  also  identifies  the 
law  of  social  life  with  the  great  moral  law  of  justice,  and,  proving 
previous  conclusions,  shows  how  retrogression  may  be  prevented 
and  a  grander  advance  begun.  This  ends  the  inquiry.  The  final 
chapter  will  explain  itself. 

The  great  importance  of  this  inquiry  will  be  obvious.  If  it  has 
been  carefully  and  logically  pursued,  its  conclusions  completely 
change  the  character  of  political  economy,  give  it  the  coherence  and 
certitude  of  a  true  science,  and  bring  it  into  full  sympathy  with  the 
aspirations  of  the  masses  of  men,  from  which  it  has  long  been  &h 


PBEFACE.  3d 

tranged.  What  I  have  done  in  this  book,  if  I  have  correctly  solved 
the  great  problem  I  have  sought  to  investigate,  is,  to  unite  the  truth 
perceived  by  the  school  of  Smith  and  Ricardo  to  the  truth  perceived 
by  the  schools  of  Proudhon  and  Lasalle;  to  show  that  laiasez  faira 
(in  its  full  true  meaning)  opens  the  way  to  a  realization  of  the  noble 
dreams  of  socialism;  to  identify  social  law  with  moral  law,  and  to 
disprove  ideas  which  in  the  minds  of  many  cloud  grand  and  elevat- 
ing perceptions. 

This  work  was  written  between  August,  1877,  and  March,  1879, 
and  the  plates  finished  by  September  of  that  year.  Since  that  time 
new  illustrations  have  been  given  of  the  correctness  of  the  views 
herein  advanced,  and  the  march  of  events — and  especially  that  great 
movement  which  has  begun  in  Great  Britain  in  the  Irish  land  agita- 
tion— shows  still  more  clearly  the  pressing  nature  of  the  problem 
I  have  endeavored  to  solve.  But  there  has  been  nothing  in  the 
criticisms  they  have  received  to  induce  the  change  or  modification 
of  these  views — in  fact,  I  have  yet  to  see  an  objection  not  answered 
in  advance  in  the  book  itself.  And  except  that  some  verbal  errors 
have  been  corrected  and  a  preface  added,  this  edition  is  the  same  as 
previous  ones. 

Hbnbt  Gbobok. 

New  York,  November,  1880. 


CONTENTS. 


iNTBODUOTOaT. 

PAGE 

The  Problem 3 

Book  I.— Waoes  akd  Capital. 

Chapter    I.  —The  current  doctrine  of  wages— Its  insufficiency 17 

IL— The  meaning  of  the  terms 80 

IIL— Wages  not  drawn  from  capital,  but  produced  by  the  labor 49 

IV.— The  maintenance  of  laborers  not  drawn  from  capital 70 

v.— The  real  functions  of  capital 79 

Book  II.— Population  and  Subsistence. 

Chapter    I.— The  Malthusian  theory,  its  genesis  and  support 91 

II.— Inferences  from  facts 103 

IIL— Inferences  from  analogy 129 

IV.— Disproof  of  the  Malthusian  theory 140 

Book  in.— The  Laws  of  Distribution. 
Chapter   I.— The  inquiry  narrowed  to  the  laws  of  distribution- necessary 

relation  of  these  laws 153 

n.— Rent  and  the  law  of  rent 165 

III.— Interest  and  the  cause  of  Interest 173 

rv.— Of  spurious  capital  and  of  profits  often  mistaken  for  interest. .  189 

v.— The  law  of  interest 195 

VI.— Wages  and  the  law  of  wages 304 

Vn.— Correlation  and  co-ordination  of  these  laws 217 

Vni.— The  statics  of  the  problem  thus  explained 219 

Book  IV.— Ebtect  of  Material  Progress  upon  the  DiSTBiairrioN  of  Wealth. 

Chapter   I.— The  dynamics  of  the  problem  yet  to  seek 225 

n.— Effect  of  increase  of  population  upon  the  distribution  of  wealth  228 
IIL— Elffect  of  improvements  in  the  arts  upon  the  distribution  of 

wealth 242 

IV.— Effect  of  the  expectation  raised  by  material  progress 253 

Book  V.— The  Probleh  Solved. 
Chapter   I.— The  primary  cause  of  recurring   paroxysms   of    industrial 

depression 861 

n.— The  persistence  of  poverty  amid  advancing  wealth. 280 


xiT  CONTENTS. 

Book  VI.— Ths  Boudt. 

CSttpter   I.— iDniffldency  of  remedies  currently  advooated 907 

II.— Ilie  true  remedy. , 896 

Book  VII.— Justick  or  trx  Bkmbdt. 

Chapter   L—Injostlce  of  private  property  In  land 881 

n.— Enslavement  of  laborers  the  ultimate  result  of  private  property 

inland 845 

m.— Claim  of  land  owners  to  compensation 356 

IV.— Property  in  land  historically  considered 8fl6 

▼.—Property  in  land  in  the  United  States 88S 

Book  vni.— Application  or  tbb  Rbiocdt. 
Chaptw   L— Private  property  in  land  inconsistent  with  the  best  use  of  land.  89S 

n.— How  equal  rights  to  the  land  may  be  asserted  and  secured 401 

m.— The  proposition  tried  by  the  canons  of  taxation 406 

IV.— Indorsements  and  objections 490 

Book  IX.— Effects  of  trx  Rkmxdt. 

Ch^>ter   L— Of  the  effect  upon  the  production  of  wealth 431 

U.— Of  the  ^ect  upon  distribution  and  thence  upon  production. ...  438 

in.— Of  the  effect  upon  individuals  and  classes 445 

IV.— Of  the  changes  that  would  be  wrought  in  social  organization 

and  sodal  life 462 

Book  X.— Thb  Law  of  HtiKAM  Proorkss. 

Chapter   I.— The  current  theory  of  human  progress— Its  InRufllciency 473 

n.— Differences  in  civilization— to  what  due 487 

m.— The  law  of  human  progress 608 

IV.— How  modem  civilization  may  decline 584 

v.— The  central  truth 541 

OOMCLUSIOH. 

IheproUanoCfaidiyldttalllfe BE8 


INTRODUCTORY. 


THE  PBOBLEH. 


Ye  bufldi  ye  build!  but  ye  enter  not  In, 

Like  the  tribes  whom  the  desert  devoured  In  their  sin; 

Prom  the  land  of  promise  ye  fade  and  die, 

Ere  its  verdure  gleams  forth  on  your  wearied  eye. 

— Mr».  8igoumey. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


THE  PROBLEM. 

The  present  century  has  been  marked  by  a  prodigious 
increase  in  wealth-producing  power.  The  utilization  of 
steam  and  electricity,  the  introduction  of  improved  proc- 
esses and  labor-saving  machinery,  the  greater  subdivision 
and  grander  scale  of  production,  the  wonderful  facilita- 
tion of  exchanges,  have  multiplied  enormously  the  effect- 
iveness of  labor. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  marvelous  era  it  was  natural 
to  expect,  and  it  was  expected,  that  labor-saving  inven- 
tions would  lighten  the  toil  and  improve  the  condition  of 
the  laborer;  that  the  enormous  increase  in  the  power  of 
producing  wealth  would  make  real  poverty  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Could  a  man  of  the  last  century — a  Franklin  or  a 
Priestley — have  seen,  in  a  vision  of  the  future,  the 
steamship  taking  the  place  of  the  sailing  vessel,  the  rail- 
road train  of  the  wagon,  the  reaping  machine  of  the 
scythe,  the  threshing  machine  of  the  flail;  could  he  have 
heard  the  throb  of  the  engines  that  in  obedience  to 
human  will,  and  for  the  satisfaction  of  human  desire, 
exert  a  power  greater  than  that  of  all  the  men  and  all 
the  beasts  of  burden  of  the  earth  combined;  could  he 
have  seen  the  forest  tree  transformed  into  finished 
lumber — into  doors,  sashes,  blinds,  boxes  or  barrels, 
with  hardly  the  touch  of  a  human  hand;  the  great  work- 
shops where  boots  and  shoes  are  turned  out  by  the  case 
with  less  labor  than  the  old-fashioned  cobbler  could  have 


4  INTRODUCTORY. 

put  on  a  sole;  the  factories  where,  under  the  eye  of  a 
girl,  cotton  becomes  cloth  faster  than  hundreds  of  stal- 
wart weavers  could  have  turned  it  out  with  their  hand- 
looms;  could  he  have  seen  steam  hammers  shaping  mam- 
moth shafts  and  mighty  anchors,  and  delicate  machinery 
making  tiny  watches;  the  diamond  drill  cutting  through 
the  heart  of  the  rocks,  and  coal  oil  sparing  the  whale; 
could  he  have  realized  the  enormous  saving  of  labor 
resulting  from  improved  facilities  of  exchange  and  com- 
munication— sheep  killed  in  Australia  eaten  fresh  in 
England,  and  the  order  given  by  the  London  banker  in 
the  afternoon  executed  in  San  Francisco  in  the  morning 
of  the  same  day;  could  he  have  conceived  of  the  hundred 
thousand  improvements  which  these  only  suggest,  what 
would  he  have  inferred  as  to  the  social  condition  of  man- 
kind? 

It  would  not  have  seemed  like  an  inference;  further 
than  the  vision  went  it  would  have  seemed  as  though  he 
saw;  and  his  heart  would  have  leaped  and  his  nerves 
would  have  thrilled,  as  one  who  from  a  height  beholds 
just  ahead  of  the  thirst-stricken  caravan  the  living  gleam 
of  rustling  woods  and  the  glint  of  laughing  waters. 
Plainly,  in  the  sight  of  the  imagination,  he  would  have 
beheld  these  new  forces  elevating  society  from  its  very 
foundations,  lifting  the  very  poorest  above  the  possibility 
of  want,  exempting  the  very  lowest  from  anxiety  for  the 
material  needs  of  life;  he  would  have  seen  these  slaves  of 
the  lamp  of  knowledge  taking  on  themselves  the  tradi- 
tional curse,  these  muscles  of  iron  and  sinews  of  steel 
making  the  poorest  laborer's  life  a  holiday,  in  which 
every  high  quality  and  noble  impulse  could  have  scope  to 
grow. 

And  out  of  these  bounteous  material  conditions  he 
would  have  seen  arising,  as  necessary  sequences,  moral 
conditions  realizing  the  golden  age  of  which  mankind 
have  always  dreamed.     Youth  no  longer  stunted  and 


THE  PBOBLEM.  5 

starved;  age  no  longer  harried  by  avarice;  the  child  at 
play  with  the  tiger;  the  man  with  the  muck-rake  drink- 
ing in  the  glory  of  the  stars!  Foul  things  fled,  fierce 
things  tame;  discord  turned  to  harmony!  For  how  could 
there  be  greed  where  all  had  enough  ?  How  could  the 
vice,  the  crime,  the  ignorance,  the  brutality,  that  spring 
from  poverty  and  the  fear  of  poverty,  exist  where  pov- 
erty had  vanished?  Who  should  crouch  where  all  were 
freemen;  who  oppress  where  all  were  peers? 

More  or  less  vague  or  clear,  these  have  been  the  hopes, 
these  the  dreams  born  of  the  improvements  which  give 
this  wonderful  century  its  preeminence.  They  have  sunk 
so  deeply  into  the  popular  mind  as  radically  to  change 
the  currents  of  thought,  to  recast  creeds  and  displace  the 
most  fundamental  conceptions.  The  haunting  visions  of 
higher  possibilities  have  not  merely  gathered  splendor 
and  vividness,  but  their  direction  has  changed — instead 
of  seeing  behind  the  faint  tinges  of  an  expiring  sunset, 
all  the  glory  of  the  daybreak  has  decked  the  skies  before. 

It  ia  true  that  disappointment  has  followed  disappoint- 
ment, and  that  discovery  upon  discovery,  and  invention 
after  invention,  have  neither  lessened  the  toil  of  those 
who  most  need  respite,  nor  brought  plenty  to  the  poor. 
But  there  have  been  so  many  things  to  which  it  seemed 
this  failure  conld  be  laid,  that  up  to  our  time  the  new 
faith  has  hardly  weakened.  We  have  better  appreciated 
the  difficulties  to  be  overcome;  but  not  the  less  trusted 
that  the  tendency  of  the  times  was  to  overcome  them. 

Now,  however,  we  are  coming  into  collision  with  facts 
which  there  can  be  no  mistaking.  From  all  parts  of  the 
civilized  world  come  complaints  of  industrial  depression; 
of  labor  condemned  to  involuntary  idleness;  of  capital 
massed  and  wasting;  of  pecuniary  distress  among  busi- 
ness men;  of  want  and  suffering  and  anxiety  among  the 
working  classes.  All  the  dull,  deadening  pain,  all  the 
keen,  maddening  anguish,  that  to  great  masses  of  men 


•  IHTBODrCTOBT. 

are  inTolred  in  the  vordB  *1iard  times,"  afflict  the  world 
to-daj.  This  state  of  things,  common  to  commnnities 
differing  bo  widely  in  situation,  in  political  institntions, 
in  fiscal  and  financial  systems,  in  density  of  population 
and  in  soci^  organization,  can  hardly  be  accounted  for 
hj  loeal  caoses.  There  is  distress  where  large  standing 
armies  are  maintuned,  bnt  there  is  also  distress  where 
tiie  standing  annies  are  nominal;  there  is  distress  where 
pnitectiTe  tariffis  stupidly  and  wastefnlly  hamper  trade, 
bot  there  is  also  distress  where  trade  is  nearly  free;  there 
is  distzesB  where  autocratic  government  yet  prevails,  bnt 
iiiev»  is  also  distress  where  political  power  is  wholly  in 
tibe  hands  of  the  people;  in  countries  where  paper  is 
money,  and  in  countries  where  gold  and  silver  are  the 
only  currency.  Evidently,  beneath  all  such  things  as 
ibeee,  we  must  infer  a  common  cause. 

That  there  is  a  common  cause,  and  that  it  is  either 
what  we  call  material  progress  or  something  closely  con- 
nected with  material  progress,  becomes  more  than  an 
inference  when  it  is  noted  that  the  phenomena  we  class 
together  and  speak  of  as  industrial  depression  are  bnt 
intensifications  of  phenomena  which  always  accompany 
material  progress,  and  which  show  themselves  more 
clearly  and  strongly  as  material  progress  goes  on.  Where 
the  conditions  to  which  material  progress  everywhere 
tends  are  most  fuDy  realized — ^that  is  to  say,  where  popu- 
lation is  densest,  wealth  greatest,  and  the  machinery  of 
production  and  exchange  most  highly  developed — we  find 
the  deepest  poverty,  the  sharpest  struggle  for  existence, 
and  the  most  of  enforced  idleness. 

It  is  to  the  newer  countries — that  is,  to  the  countries 
where  material  progress  is  yet  in  its  earlier  stages — that 
laborers  emigrate  in  search  of  higher  wages,  and  capital 
flows  in  search  of  higher  interest.  It  ia  in  the  older 
counfoies — that  is  to  say,  the  countries  where  material 
ffogreas  has  reached  later  stages — ^that  widespread  desti- 


iiifvaii  mfkendrt  of  tte 
CBo  mto  one  «f  tke  aevr  emmmmaatam  whan . 

is  jnfc  fcngiBBJiig  As  ]aee«f  fragreoi;  whoa  the 

iriiere  tke  moc^MBfc  «f  veettfc  m  aei  jet 
graafc  CBoei^  te  caalile  eaj  cIbb  te  lii<e  ie  cne  end 
leiMj;  vlwretibebeii  koaaeie  bat  a  aim  «<  legiar  a 
iliitli  mil  ftiiii  Aielj,  Mil  Ifcii  liihiit  ■miiiBreeito 
daOf  wk--«A  the»gh  jw  vOl  lad  «e  iliii  r  «f 
IP— iih  waA  «n  it»  i  iwi  iiiil  ■■!■,  yea  will  ] 
Then  ie  no  lazny,  tefc  tiwre  ii  ■• 
fifieg,  aer  a  ire 

afina^aid  ao  eae  eUe  aaii  urOE^gfee 
waA.  m  einei  ■■  il  ty  the  fast  ef  ^ 
Bdk  jwtai  eadbacaunai  . 
wiaek  eU  cmliaBd  «— eeitjea  are  Milling  ior,  aati 
■  ■■Ilia  ie  the  eeeleef  — **'-^^  fngme— jeefc  at  dl 

i<  the  vorid,  eai  graMcr  atiliaiiaa  ef  UbeMMFiee 


8  IHTEODUCTORT. 

ress  tends — proves  that  the  social  diflficulties  existing 
wherever  a  certain  stage  of  progress  has  been  reached,  do 
not  arise  from  local  circumstances,  but  are,  in  some  way 
or  another,  engendered  by  progress  itself. 

And,  unpleasant  as  it  may  be  to  admit  it,  it  is  at  last 
becoming  evident  that  the  enormous  increase  in  produc- 
tive power  which  has  marked  the  present  century  and  is 
still  going  on  with  accelerating  ratio,  has  no  tendency 
to  extirpate  poverty  or  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  those 
compelled  to  toil.  It  simply  widens  the  gulf  between 
Dives  and  Lazarus,  and  makes  the  struggle  for  existence 
more  intense.  The  march  of  invention  has  clothed 
mankind  with  powers  of  which  a  century  ago  the  boldest 
imagination  could  not  have  dreamed.  But  in  factories 
where  labor-saving  machinery  has  reached  its  most  won- 
derful development,  little  children  are  at  work;  wherever 
the  new  forces  are  anything  like  fully  utilized,  large 
classes  are  maintained  by  charity  or  live  on  the  verge  of 
recourse  to  it;  amid  the  greatest  accumulations  of  wealth, 
men  die  of  starvation,  and  puny  infants  suckle  dry 
breasts;  while  everywhere  the  greed  of  gain,  the  worship 
of  wealth,  shows  the  force  of  the  fear  of  want.  The 
promised  land  flies  before  us  like  the  mirage.  The  fruits 
of  the  tree  of  knowledge  turn  as  we  grasp  them  to 
apples  of  Sodom  that  crumble  at  the  touch. 

It  is  true  that  wealth  has  been  greatly  increased,  and 
that  the  average  of  comfort,  leisure,  and  refinement  has 
been  raised;  but  these  gains  are  not  general.  In  them 
the  lowest  class  do  not  share.*    I  do  not  mean  that  the 

*  It  is  true  that  the  poorest  may  now  in  certain  ways  enjoy  what 
the  richest  a  century  ago  could  not  have  commanded,  but  this  does 
not  show  improvement  of  condition  so  long  as  the  ability  to  obtain 
the  necessaries  of  life  is  not  increased.  The  beggar  in  a  great  city 
may  enjoy  many  things  from  which  the  backwoods  farmer  is  de- 
barred, but  that  does  not  prove  the  condition  of  the  city  beggar 
better  than  that  of  the  independent  farmer. 


THE  PROBLEM.  0 

condition  of  the  lowest  class  has  nowhere  nor  in  anything 
been  improved ;  but  that  there  is  nowhere  any  improve- 
ment which  can  be  credited  to  increased  productive  power. 
I  mean  that  the  tendency  of  what  we  call  material  prog- 
ress is  in  nowise  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  lowest 
class  in  the  essentials  of  healthy,  happy  human  life. 
Nay,  more,  that  it  is  still  further  to  depress  the  condition 
of  the  lowest  class.  The  new  forces,  elevating  in  their 
nature  though  they  be,  do  not  act  upon  the  social  fabric 
from  underneath,  as  was  for  a  long  time  hoped  and  be- 
lieved, but  strike  it  at  a  point  intermediate  between  top 
and  bottom.  It  is  as  though  an  immense  wedge  were 
being  forced,  not  underneath  society,  but  through  soci- 
ety. Those  who  are  above  the  point  of  separation  are 
elevated,  but  those  who  are  below  are  crushed  down. 

This  depressing  effect  is  not  generally  realized,  for  it 
is  not  apparent  where  there  has  long  existed  a  class  just 
able  to  live.  Where  the  lowest  class  barely  lives,  as  has 
been  the  case  for  a  long  time  in  many  parts  of  Europe, 
it  is  impossible  for  it  to  get  any  lower,  for  the  next  low- 
est step  is  out  of  existence,  and  no  tendency  to  further 
depression  can  readily  show  itself.  But  in  the  progress 
of  new  settlements  to  the  conditions  of  older  communi- 
ties it  may  clearly  be  seen  that  material  progress  does  not 
merely  fail  to  relieve  poverty — it  actually  produces  it. 
In  the  United  States  it  is  clear  that  squalor  and  misery, 
and  the  vices  and  crimes  that  spring  from  them,  every- 
where increase  as  the  village  grows  to  the  city,  and  the 
march  of  development  brings  the  advantages  of  the  im- 
proved methods  of  production  and  exchange.  It  is  in 
the  older  and  richer  sections  of  the  Union  that  pauperism 
and  distress  among  the  working  classes  are  becoming 
most  painfully  apparent.  If  there  is  less  deep  poverty  in 
San  Francisco  than  in  New  York,  is  it  not  because  San 
Francisco  is  yet  behind  New  York  in  all  that  both  cities 
are  striving  for?    When  San  Francisco  reaches  the  point 


10  IHTBODrCTOBY. 

where  New  York  now  is,  who  can  doubt  that  there  will 
also  be  ragged  and  barefooted  children  on  her  streets? 

This  association  of  poverty  with  progress  is  the  great 
enigma  of  our  times.  It  is  the  central  fact  from  which 
spring  industrial,  social,  and  political  diflficulties  that 
perplex  the  world,  and  with  which  statesmanship  and 
philanthropy  and  education  grapple  in  vain.  From  it 
come  the  clouds  that  overhang  the  future  of  the  most 
progressive  and  self-reliant  nations.  It  is  the  riddle 
which  the  Sphinx  of  Fate  puts  to  our  civilization,  and 
which  not  to  answer  is  to  be  destroyed.  So  long  as  all 
the  increased  wealth  which  modem  progress  brings  goes 
but  to  build  up  great  fortunes,  to  increase  luxury  and 
make  sharper  the  contrast  between  the  House  of  Have 
and  the  House  of  Want,  progress  is  not  real  and  cannot 
be  permanent.  The  reaction  must  come.  The  tower 
leans  from  its  foundations,  and  every  new  story  but 
hastens  the  final  catastrophe.  To  educate  men  who 
must  be  condemned  to  poverty,  is  but  to  make  them 
restive;  to  base  on  a  state  of  most  glaring  social  in- 
equality political  institutions  under  which  men  are 
theoretically  equal,  is  to  stand  a  pyramid  on  its  apex. 

All-important  as  this  question  is,  pressing  itself  from 
every  quarter  painfully  upon  attention,  it  has  not  yet  re- 
ceived a  solution  which  accounts  for  all  the  facts  and 
points  to  any  clear  and  simple  remedy.  This  is  shown 
by  the  widely  varying  attempts  to  account  for  the  pre- 
vailing depression.  They  exhibit  not  merely  a  diver- 
gence between  vulgar  notions  and  scientific  theories,  but 
also  show  that  the  concurrence  which  should  exist  be- 
tween those  who  avow  the  same  general  theories  breaks 
up  upon  practical  questions  into  an  anarchy  of  opinion. 
Upon  high  economic  authority  we  have  been  told  that 
the  prevailing  depression  is  due  to  over-consumption; 
upon  equally  high  authority,  that  it  is  due  to  over-pro- 
duction; while  the  wastes  of  war,  the  extension  of  rail- 


THE  PROBLEM.  11 

roads,  the  attempts  of  workmen  to  keep  up  wages,  the 
demonetization  of  silver,  the  issues  of  paper  money,  the 
increase  of  labor-saving  machinery,  the  opening  of 
shorter  avenues  to  trade,  etc.,  are  separately  pointed 
out  as  the  cause,  by  writers  of  reputation. 

And  while  professors  thus  disagree,  the  ideas  that 
there  is  a  necessary  conflict  between  capital  and  labor, 
that  machinery  is  an  evil,  that  competition  must  be  re- 
strained and  interest  abolished,  that  wealth  may  be 
created  by  the  issue  of  money,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  gov- 
ernment to  furnish  capital  or  to  furnish  work,  are 
rapidly  making  way  among  the  great  body  of  the  people, 
who  keenly  feel  a  hurt  and  are  sharply  conscious  of  a 
wrong.  Such  ideas,  which  bring  great  masses  of  men, 
the  repositories  of  ultimate  political  power,  under  the 
leadership  of  charlatans  and  demagogues,  are  fraught 
with  danger;  but  they  cannot  be  successfully  combated 
until  political  economy  shall  give  some  answer  to  the 
great  question  which  shall  be  consistent  with  all  her 
teachings,  and  which  shall  commend  itself  to  the  per- 
ceptions of  the  great  masses  of  men. 

It  must  be  within  the  province  of  political  economy  to 
give  such  an  answer.  For  political  economy  is  not  a  set 
of  dogmas.  It  is  the  explanation  of  a  certain  set  of 
facts.  It  is  the  science  which,  in  the  sequence  of  certain 
phenomena,  seeks  to  trace  mutual  relations  and  to  iden- 
tify cause  and  effect,  just  as  the  physical  sciences  seek  to 
do  in  other  sets  of  phenomena.  It  lays  its  foundations 
upon  firm  ground.  The  premises  from  which  it  makes 
its  deductions  are  truths  which  have  the  highest  sanc- 
tion; axioms  which  we  all  recognize;  upon  which  we 
safely  base  the  reasoning  and  actions  of  every-day  life, 
and  which  may  be  reduced  to  the  metaphysical  expres- 
sion of  the  physical  law  that  motion  seeks  the  line  of 
least  resistance — viz.,  that  men  seek  to  gratify  their  de- 
sires with  the  least  exertion.     Proceeding  from  a  basis 


12  INTRODUCTORY. 

thus  assnred,  its  processes,  which  consist  simply  in 
identification  and  separation,  have  the  same  certainty. 
In  this  sense  it  is  as  exact  a  science  as  geometry,  which, 
from  similar  truths  relative  to  space,  obtains  its  conclu- 
sions by  similar  means,  and  its  conclusions  when  valid 
should  be  as  self-apparent.  And  although  in  the  domain 
of  political  economy  we  cannot  test  our  theories  by  arti- 
ficially produced  combinations  or  conditions,  as  may  be 
done  in  some  of  the  other  sciences,  yet*  we  can  apply 
tests  no  less  conclusive,  by  comparing  societies  in  which 
different  conditions  exist,  or  by,  in  imagination,  separat- 
ing, combining,  adding  or  eliminating  forces  or  factors 
of  known  direction. 

I  propose  in  the  following  pages  to  attempt  to  solve  by 
the  methods  of  political  economy  the  great  problem  I 
have  outlined.  I  propose  to  seek  the  law  which  associ- 
ates poverty  with  progress,  and  increases  want  with 
advancing  wealth;  and  I  believe  that  in  the  explanation 
of  this  paradox  we  shall  find  the  explanation  of  those 
recurring  seasons  of  industrial  and  commercial  paralysis 
which,  viewed  independently  of  their  relations  to  more 
general  phenomena,  seem  so  inexplicable.  Properly 
commenced  and  carefully  pursued,  such  an  investigation 
must  yield  a  conclusion  that  will  stand  every  test,  and  as 
truth,  will  correlate  with  all  other  truth.  For  in  the 
sequence  of  phenomena  there  is  no  accident.  Every 
effect  has  a  cause,  and  every  fact  implies  a  preceding 
fact. 

That  political  economy,  as  at  present  taught,  does  not 
explain  the  persistence  of  poverty  amid  advancing  wealth 
in  a  manner  which  accords  with  the  deep-seated  percep- 
tions of  men;  that  the  unquestionable  truths  which  it 
does  teach  are  unrelated  and  disjointed;  that  it  has  failed 
to  make  the  progress  in  popular  thought  that  truth, 
even  when  unpleasant,  must  make;  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, after  a  century  of  cultivation,  during  which  it  has 


THB  PBOBLEX.  13 

engrossed  the  attention  of  some  of  the  most  subtle  and 
powerful  intellects,  it  should  be  spurned  by  the  statsman, 
scouted  by  the  masses,  and  relegated  in  the  opinion  of 
many  educated  and  thinking  men  to  the  rank  of  a 
pseudo-science  in  which  nothing  is  fixed  or  can  be  fixed — 
must,  it  seems  to  me,  be  due  not  to  any  inability  of  the 
science  when  properly  pursued,  but  to  some  false  step 
in  its  premises,  or  overlooked  factor  in  its  estimates. 
And  as  such  mistakes  are  generally  concealed  by  the  re- 
spect paid  to  authority,  I  propose  in  this  inquiry  to  take 
nothing  for  granted,  but  to  bring  even  accepted  theories 
to  the  test  of  first  principles,  and  should  they  not  stand 
the  test,  freshly  to  interrogate  facts  in  the  endeavor  to 
discover  their  law. 

I  propose  to  beg  no  question,  to  shrink  from  no  con- 
clusion, but  to  follow  truth  wherever  it  may  lead.  Upon 
us  is  the  responsibility  of  seeking  the  law,  for  in  the  very 
heart  of  our  civilization  to-day  women  faint  and  little 
children  moan.  But  what  that  law  may  prove  to  be  is 
not  our  affair.  If  the  conclusions  that  we  reach  run 
counter  to  our  prejudices,  let  us  not  flinch;  if  they  chal- 
lenge institutions  that  have  long  been  deemed  wise  and 
natural,  let  us  not  turn  back. 


BOOK  I. 

WAGES  AND  CAPITAL. 


CHAPTER      I. — ^THE       CURRENT       DOCTRINE — ITS      INSHT- 

FICIENCT. 
CHAPTER    II. — THE  MEANING   OP  THE  TERMS. 
CHAPTER  III. — WAGES    NOT    DRAWN   FROM     CAPITAL,    B«T 

PRODUCED  BY  THE   LABOR. 
CHAPTER  IT. — ^THB     MAINTENANCE      OF     LABORERS     NOT 

DRAWN   FROM  CAPITAL. 
CHAPTER     V. — ^THB  REAL  FUNCTIONS  OF  CAPITAL. 


He  that  Is  to  follow  philosophj  must  be  a  freeman  in  mind. 

—PtaUmf. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CUBRBNT  DOCTRINE  OF  WAGES—ITS  INSUFFICIENCY. 

Reducing  to  its  most  compact  form  the  problem  we 
have  set  out  to  investigate,  let  us  examine,  step  by  step, 
the  explanation  which  political  economy,  as  now  accepted 
by  the  best  authority,  gives  of  it. 

The  cause  which  produces  poverty  in  the  midst  of  ad- 
vancing wealth  is  evidently  the  cause  which  exhibits  it- 
self in  the  tendency,  everywhere  recognized,  of  wages  to 
a  minimum.  Let  us,  therefore,  put  our  inquiry  into  this 
compact  form: 

Why,  in  spite  of  increase  in  productive  power,  do  wages 
tend  to  a  minimum  which  will  give  but  a  hare  living  f 

The  answer  of  the  current  political  economy  is,  that 
wages  are  fixed,  by  the  ratio  between  the  number  of 
laborers  and  the  amount  of  capital  devoted  to  the  em- 
ployment of  labor,  and  constantly  tend  to  the  lowest 
amount  on  which  laborers  will  consent  to  live  and  repro- 
duce, because  the  increase  in  the  number  of  laborers 
tends  naturally  to  follow  and  overtake  any  increase  in 
capital.  The  increase  of  the  divisor  being  thus  held  in 
check  only  by  the  possibilities  of  the  quotient,  the  divi- 
dend may  be  increased  to  infinity  without  greater  result. 

In  current  thought  this  doctrine  holds  all  but  undis- 
puted sway.  It  bears  the  indorsement  of  the  very  high- 
est names  among  the  cultivators  of  political  economy, 
and  though  there  have  been  attacks  upon  it,  they  aro 


18  WAGES  AND  CAPITAIm  Book  L 

generally  more  formal  than  real.*  It  is  assumed  by 
Buckle  as  the  basis  of  his  generalizations  of  universal 
history.  It  is  taught  in  all,  or  nearly  all,  the  great  Eng- 
lish and  American  universities,  and  is  laid  down  in  text- 
books which  aim  at  leading  the  masses  to  reason  correctly 
upon  practical  affairs,  while  it  seems  to  harmonize  with 
the  new  philosophy,  which,  having  in  a  few  years  all  but 
conquered  the  scientific  world,  is  now  rapidly  permeating 
the  general  mind. 

Thus  entrenched  in  the  upper  regions  of  thought,  it  is 
in  cruder  form  even  more  firmly  rooted  in  what  may  be 
styled  the  lower.  "What  gives  to  the  fallacies  of  protec- 
tion such  a  tenacious  hold,  in  spite  of  their  evident  in- 
consistencies and  absurdities,  is  the  idea  that  the  sum  to 
be  distributed  in  wages  is  in  each  community  a  fixed  one, 
which  the  competition  of  "foreign  labor"  must  still 
further  subdivide.  The  same  idea  underlies  most  of  the 
theories  which  aim  at  the  abolition  of  interest  and  the 
restriction  of  competition,  as  the  means  whereby  the 
share  of  the  laborer  in  the  general  wealth  can  be  in- 
creased; and  it  crops  out  in  every  direction  among  those 
who  are  not  thoughtful  enough  to  have  any  theories,  as 
may  be  seen  in   the  columns  of  newspapers  and  the 

debates  of  legislative  bodies. 

.  ••■ 

*  This  seems  to  me  true  of  Mr.  Thornton's  objections,  for  while 
he  denies  the  existence  of  a  predetermined  wage  fund,  consisting  of 
a  portion  of  capital  set  apart  for  the  purchase  of  labor,  he  yet  holds 
(which  is  the  essential  thing)  that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital, 
and  that  increase  or  decrease  of  capital  is  increase  or  decrease  of  the 
fund  available  for  the  payment  of  wages.  The  most  vital  attack 
upon  the  wage  fund  doctrine  of  which  I  know  is  that  of  Professor 
Francis  A.  Walker  (The  Wages  Question:  New  York,  1876),  yet  he 
admits  that  wages  are  in  large  part  advanced  from  capital — which, 
so  far  as  it  goes,  is  all  that  the  stanchest  supporter  of  the  wage 
fund  theory  could  claim — ^while  he  fully  accepts  the  Malthusian 
theory.  Thus  his  practical  conclusions  in  nowise  differ  from  those 
reached  by  expounders  of  the  current  theory. 


Chap.  L  THE  CURRENT  DOCTRIIO;.  19 

And  yet,  widely  accepted  and  deeply  rooted  as  it  is,  it 
seems  to  me  that  this  theory  does  not  tally  with  obvious 
facts.  For,  if  wages  depend  upon  the  ratio  between  the 
amount  of  labor  seeking  employment  and  the  amount  of 
capital  devoted  to  its  employment,  the  relative  scarcity 
or  abundance  of  one  factor  must  mean  the  relative 
abundance  or  scarcity  of  the  other.  Thus,  capital  must 
be  relatively  abundant  where  wages  are  high,  and  rela- 
tively scarce  where  wages  are  low.  Now,  as  the  capital 
used  in  paying  wages  must  largely  consist  of  the  capital 
constantly  seeking  investment,  the  current  rate  of  inter- 
est must  be  the  measure  of  its  relative  abundance  or  scar- 
city. So,  if  it  be  true  that  wages  depend  upon  the  ratio 
between  the  amount  of  labor  seeking  employment  and 
the  capital  devoted  to  its  employment,  then  high  wages, 
the  mark  of  the  relative  scarcity  of  labor,  must  \ie  ac- 
companied by  low  interest,  the  mark  of  the  relative 
abundance  of  capital,  and  reversely,  low  wages  must  be 
accompanied  by  high  interest. 

This  is  not  the  fact,  but  the  contrary.  Eliminating 
from  interest  the  element  of  insurance,  and  regarding 
only  interest  proper,  or  the  return  for  the  use  of  capital, 
is  it  not  a  general  truth  that  interest  is  high  where  and 
when  wages  are  high,  and  low  where  and  when  wages  are 
low?  Both  wages  and  interest  have  been  higher  in  the 
United  States  than  in  England,  in  the  Pacific  than  in 
the  Atlantic  States.  Is  it  not  a  notorious  fact  that  where 
labor  flows  for  higher  wages,  capital  also  flows  for  higher 
interest?  Is  it  not  true  that  wherever  there  has  been  a 
general  rise  or  fall  in  wages  there  has  been  at  the  same 
time  a  similar  rise  or  fall  in  interest?  In  California,  for 
instance,  when  wages  were  higher  than  anywhere  else  in 
the  world,  so  also  was  interest  higher.  Wages  and  inter- 
est have  in  California  gone  down  together.  When  com- 
mon wages  were  $5  a  day,  the  ordinary  bank  rate  of  in- 
terest was  twenty-four  per  cent,  per  annum.     Now  that 


30  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Booh  L 

common  wages  are  $2  or  12.50  a  day,  the  ordinary  bank 
rate  is  from  ten  to  twelve  per  cent. 

Now,  this  broad,  general  fact,  that  wages  are  higher  in 
new  countries,  where  capital  is  relatively  scarce,  than  in 
old  countries,  where  capital  is  relatively  abundant,  is  too 
glaring  to  be  ignored.  And  although  very  lightly 
touched  upon,  it  is  noticed  by  the  expounders  of  the  cur- 
rent political  economy.  The  manner  in  which  it  is 
noticed  proves  what  I  say,  that  it  is  utterly  inconsistent 
with  the  accepted  theory  of  wages.  For  in  explaining  it 
such  writers  as  Mill,  Fawcett,  and  Price  virtually  give  up 
the  theory  of  wages  upon  which,  in  the  same  treatises, 
they  formally  insist.  Though  they  declare  that  wages 
are  fixed  by  the  ratio  between  capital  and  laborers,  they 
explain  the  higher  wages  and  interest  of  new  countries 
by  tb^  greater  relative  production  of  wealth.  I  shall 
hereafter  show  that  this  is  not  the  fact,  but  that,  on  the 
contrary,  the  production  of  wealth  is  relatively  larger  in 
old  and  densely  populated  countries  than  in  new  and 
sparsely  populated  countries.  But  at  present  I  merely 
wish  to  point  out  the  inconsistency.  For  to  say  that  the 
higher  wages  of  new  countries  are  due  to  greater  propor- 
tionate production,  is  clearly  to  make  the  ratio  with  pro- 
duction, and  not  the  ratio  with  capital,  the  determinator 
of  wages. 

Though  this  inconsistency  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
perceived  by  the  class  of  writers  to  whom  I  refer,  it  has 
been  noticed  by  one  of  the  most  logical  of  the  expounders 
of  the  current  political  economy.  Professor  Cairnes* 
endeavors  in  a  very  ingenious  way  to  reconcile  the  fact 
with  the  theory,  by  assuming  that  in  new  countries, 
where  industry  is  generally  directed  to  the  production  of 
food  and  what  in  manufactures  is  called  raw  material,  a 

*  Some  Leading  Principles  of  Political  Economy  Newly  Ex- 
pounded, Chapter  1,  Part  3. 


Chnp.  I.  THE  CUREENT  DOCTRINE.  21 

much  larger  proportion  of  the  capital  used  in  production 
is  devoted  to  the  payment  of  wages  than  in  older  coun- 
tries where  a  greater  part  must  be  expended  in  machinery 
and  material,  and  thus,  in  the  new  country,  though  cap- 
ital is  scarcer,  and  interest  is  higher,  the  amount  deter- 
mined to  the  payment  of  wages  is  really  larger,  and 
wages  are  also  higher.  For  instance,  of  $100,000  devoted 
in  an  old  country  to  manufactures,  $80,000  would  prob- 
ably be  expended  for  buildings,  machinery  and  the  pur- 
chase of  materials,  leaving  but  $20,000  to  be  paid  out  in 
wages;  whereas  in  a  new  country,  of  $30,000  devoted  to 
agriculture,  etc.,  not  more  than  $5,000  would  be  required 
for  tools,  etc.,  leaving  $25,000  to  be  distributed  in  wages. 
In  this  way  it  is  explained  that  the  wage  fund  may  be 
comparatively  large  where  capital  is  comparatively  scarce, 
and  high  wages  and  high  interest  accompany  each  other. 
In  what  follows  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  show  that 
this  explanation  is  based  upon  a  total  misapprehension 
of  the  relations  of  labor  to  capital — a  fundamental  error 
as  to  the  fund  from  which  wages  are  drawn;  but  at  pres- 
ent it  is  necessary  only  to  point  out  that  the  connection 
in  the  fluctuation  of  wages  and  interest  in  the  same 
countries  and  in  the  same  branches  of  industry  cannot 
thus  be  explained.  In  those  alternations  known  as  "good 
times"  and  "hard  times"  a  brisk  demand  for  labor  and 
good  wages  is  always  accompanied  by  a  brisk  demand  for 
capital  and  stifE  rates  of  interest.  While,  when  laborers 
cannot  find  employment  and  wages  droop,  there  is  always 
an  accumulation  of  capital  seeking  investment  at  low 
rates.*  The  present  depression  has  been  no  less  marked 
by  want  of  employment  and  distress  among  the  working 
classes  than  by  the  accumulation  of  unemployed  capital 
in  all  the  great  centers,  and  by  nominal  rates  of  interest 

*  Times  of  commercial  panic  are  marked  by  high  rates  of  dis- 
count, but  this  is  evidently  not  a  high  rate  of  interest,  properly  so- 
called,  but  a  high  rate  of  insurance  against  risk. 


22  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

on  undoubted  security.  Thus,  under  conditions  which 
admit  of  no  explanation  consistent  with  the  current 
theory,  do  we  find  high  interest  coinciding  with  high 
wages,  and  low  interest  with  low  wages — capital  seemingly 
scarce  when  labor  is  scarce,  and  abundant  when  labor  is 
abundant. 

All  these  well  known  facts,  which  coincide  with  each 
other,  point  to  a  relation  between  wages  and  interest, 
but  it  is  to  a  relation  of  conjunction,  not  of  opposition. 
Evidently  they  are  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  theory 
that  wages  are  determined  by  the  ratio  between  labor  and 
capital,  or  any  part  of  capital. 

How,  then,  it  will  be  asked,  could  such  a  theory  arise? 
How  is  it  that  it  has  been  accepted  by  a  succession  of 
economists,  from  the  time  of  Adam  Smith  to  the  present 
day? 

If  we  examine  the  reasoning  by  which  in  current 
treatises  this  theory  of  wages  is  supported,  we  see  at  once 
that  it  is  not  an  induction  from  observed  facts,  but  a  de- 
duction from  a  previously  assumed  theory — viz.,  that 
wages  are  drawn  from  capital.  It  being  assumed  that 
capital  is  the  source  of  wages,  it  necessarily  follows  that 
the  gross  amount  of  wages  must  be  limited  by  the 
amount  of  capital  devoted  to  the  employment  of  labor, 
and  hence  that  the  amount  individual  laborers  can  re- 
ceive must  be  determined  by  the  ratio  between  their 
number  and  the  amount  of  capital  existing  for  their  rec- 
ompense.*   This  reasoning  is  valid,  but  the  conclusion, 

•  For  instance  McCuUoch  (Note  VI  to  Wealth  of  Nations)  says: 
"  That  portion  of  the  capital  or  wealth  of  a  country  which  the  em 
ployers  of  labor  intend  to  or  are  willing  to  pay  out  in  the  purchase 
of  labor,  may  be  much  larger  at  one  time  than  another.  But  what- 
ever may  be  its  absolute  magnitude,  it  obviously  forms  the  only 
source  from  which  any  portion  of  the  wages  of  labor  can  be  derived. 
No  other  fund  is  in  existence  from  which  the  laborer,  as  such,  can 
draw  a  single  shilling.    And  hence  it  follows  that  the  average  rate 


Chap.  I.  THE  CURRENT  DOCTRINE.  23 

as  we  have  seen,  does  not  correspond  with  the  facts. 
The  fault,  therefore,  must  be  in  the  premises.  Let  us 
see. 

I  am  aware  that  the  theorem  that  wages  are  drawn 
from  capital  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental  and  appar- 
ently best  settled  of  current  political  economy,  and  that 
it  has  been  accepted  as  axiomatic  by  all  the  great  think- 
ers who  have  devoted  their  powers  to  the  elucidation  of 
the  science.  Nevertheless,  I  think  it  can  be  demon- 
strated to  be  a  fundamental  error — the  fruitful  parent  of 
a  long  series  of  errors,  which  vitiate  most  important  prac- 
tical conclusions.  This  demonstration  I  am  about  to 
attempt.  It  is  necessary  that  it  should  be  clear  and  con- 
clusive, for  a  doctrine  upon  which  so  much  important 
reasoning  is  based,  which  is  supported  by  such  a  weight 
of  authority,  which  is  so  plausible  in  itself,  and  is  so  lia- 
ble to  recur  in  different  forms,  cannot  be  safely  brushed 
aside  in  a  paragraph. 

The  proposition  I  shall  endeavor  to  prove,  is: 

That  wages,  instead  of  being  draiun  from  capital,  are  in 
reality  drawn  from  the  product  of  the  labor  for  which 
they  are  paid.* 

Now,  inasmuch  as  the  current  theory  that  wages  are 
drawn  from  capital  also  holds  that  capital  is  reimbursed 
from  production,  this  at  first  glance  may  seem  a  distinc- 
tion without  a  difference — a  mere  change  in  terminology, 

of  wages,  or  the  share  of  the  national  capital  appropriated  to  the 
employment  of  labor  falling,  at  an  average,  to  each  laborer,  must 
entirely  depend  on  its  amount  as  compared  with  the  number  of 
those  amongst  whom  it  has  to  be  divided."  Similar  citations  might 
be  made  from  all  the  standard  economists. 

*  We  are  speaking  of  labor  expended  in  production,  to  which  it  is 
best  for  the  sake  of  simplicity  to  confine  the  inquiry.  Any  question 
which  may  arise  in  the  reader's  mind  as  to  wages  for  unproductive 
services  had  best  therefore  be  deferred. 


24  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I. 

to  discuss  which  would  be  but  to  add  to  those  unprofit- 
able disputes  that  render  so  much  that  has  been  written 
upon  politico-economic  subjects  as  barren  and  worthless 
as  the  controversies  of  the  various  learned  societies  about 
the  true  reading  of  the  inscription  on  the  stone  that  Mr. 
Pickwick  found.  But  that  it  is  much  more  than  a 
formal  distinction  will  be  apparent  when  it  is  considered 
that  upon  the  difference  between  the  two  propositions 
are  built  up  all  the  current  theories  as  to  the  relations  of 
capital  and  labor;  that  from  it  are  deduced  doctrines 
that,  themselves  regarded  as  axiomatic,  bound,  direct, 
and  govern  the  ablest  minds  in  the  discussion  of  the  most 
momentous  questions.  For,  upon  the  assumption  that 
wages  are  drawn  directly  from  capital,  and  not  from  the 
product  of  the  labor,  is  based,  not  only  the  doctrine  that 
wages  depend  upon  the  ratio  between  capital  and  labor, 
but  the  doctrine  that  industry  is  limited  by  capital — that 
capital  must  be  accumulated  before  labor  is  employed, 
and  labor  cannot  be  employed  except  as  capital  is  accu- 
mulated; the  doctrine  that  every  increase  of  capital  gives 
or  is  capable  of  giving  additional  employment  to  indus-. 
try;  the  doctrine  that  the  conversion  of  circulating  car 
ital  into  fixed  capital  lessens  the  fund  applicable  to  th.  • 
maintenance  of  labor;  the  doctrine  that  more  laborers 
can  be  employed  at  low  than  at  high  wages;  the  doctrine 
that  capital  applied  to  agriculture  will  maintain  more 
laborers  than  if  applied  to  manufactures  ;  the  doctrine 
that  profits  are  high  or  low  as  wages  are  low  or  high,  or 
that  they  depend  upon  the  cost  of  the  subsistence  of 
laborers;  together  with  such  paradoxes  as  that  a  demand 
for  commodities  is  not  a  demand  for  labor,  or  that  cer- 
tain commodities  maybe  increased  in  cost  by  a  reduction 
in  wages  or  diminished  in  cost  by  an  increase  in  wages. 

In  short,  all  the  teachings  of  the  current  political 
economy,  in  the  widest  and  most  important  part  of  its 
domain^  are  based  more  or  less  directly  upon  the  assump- 


Chap.  I.  THE  CURRENT  DOCTRINE.  25 

tion  that  labor  is  maintained  and  paid  out  of  existing 
capital  before  the  product  which  constitutes  the  ultimate 
object  is  secured.  If  it  be  shown  that  this  is  an  error, 
and  that  on  the  contrary  the  maintenance  and  payment 
of  labor  do  not  even  temporarily  trench  on  capital,  but 
are  directly  drawn  from  the  product  of  the  labor,  then  all 
this  vast  superstructure  is  left  without  support  and  must 
fall.  And  so  likewise  must  fall  the  vulgar  theories  which 
also  have  their  base  in  the  belief  that  the  sum  to  be  dis- 
tributed in  wages  is  a  fixed  one,  the  individual  shares  in 
which  must  necessarily  be  decreased  by  an  increase  in 
the  number  of  laborers. 

The  difference  between  the  current  theory  and  the  one 
I  advance  is,  in  fact,  similar  to  that  between  the  mercan- 
tile theory  of  international  exchanges  and  that  with 
which  Adam  Smith  supplanted  it.  Between  the  theory 
that  commerce  is  the  exchange  of  commodities  for 
money,  and  the  theory  that  it  is  the  exchange  of  commod- 
ities for  commodities,  there  may  seem  no  real  difference 
when  it  is  remembered  that  the  adherents  of  the  mercan- 
tile theory  did  not  assume  that  money  had  any  other  use 
than  as  it  could  be  exchanged  for  commodities.  Yet,  in 
the  practical  application  of  these  two  theories,  there 
arises  all  the  difference  between  rigid  governmental  pro- 
tection and  free  trade. 

If  I  have  said  enough  to  show  the  reader  the  ultimate 
importance  of  the  reasoning  through  which  I  am  about 
to  ask  him  to  follow  me,  it  will  not  be  necessary  to 
apologize  in  advance  either  for  simplicity  or  prolixity. 
In  arraigning  a  doctrine  of  such  importance — a  doctrine 
supported  by  such  a  weight  of  authority,  it  is  necessary 
to  be  both  clear  and  thorough. 

Were  it  not  for  this  I  should  be  tempted  to  dismiss 
with  a  sentence  the  assumption  that  wages  are  drawn 
from  capital.  For  all  the  vast  superstructure  which  the 
current  political  economy  builds  upon  this  doctrine  is 


^6  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

in  truth  based  upon  a  foundation  which  has  been  merely 
taken  for  granted,  without  the  slightest  attempt  to  dis- 
tinguish the  apparent  from  the  real.  Because  wages  are 
generally  paid  in  money,  and  in  many  of  the  operations 
of  production  are  paid  before  the  product  is  fully  com- 
pleted, or  can  be  utilized,  it  is  inferred  that  wages  are 
drawn  from  pre-existing  capital,  and,  therefore,  that  in- 
dustry is  limited  by  capital — that  is  to  say  that  labor  can- 
not be  employed  until  capital  has  been  accumulated,  and 
can  only  be  employed  to  the  extent  that  capital  has  been 
accumulated. 

Yet  in  the  very  treatises  in  which  the  limitation  of  in- 
dustry by  capital  is  laid  down  without  reservation  and 
made  the  basis  for  the  most  important  reasonings  and 
elaborate  theories,  we  are  told  that  capital  is  stored-up 
or  accumulated  labor — .''that  part  of  wealth  which  is 
saved  to  assist  future  production.''  If  we  substitute  for 
the  word  "capital"  this  definition  of  the  word,  the  propo- 
sition carries  its  own  refutation,  for  that  labor  cannot  be 
employed  until  the  results  of  labor  are  saved  becomes  too 
absurd  for  discussion. 

Should  we,  however,  with  this  reductio  ad  absurdum, 
attempt  to  close  the  argument,  we  should  probably  be 
met  with  the  explanation,  not  that  the  first  laborers  were 
supplied  by  Providence  with  the  capital  necessary  to  set 
them  to  work,  but  that  the  proposition  merely  refers  to  a 
state  of  society  in  which  production  has  become  a  com- 
plex operation. 

But  the  fundamental  truth,  that  in  all  economic  rea- 
soning must  be  firmly  grasped,  and  never  let  go,  is  that 
society  in  its  most  highly  developed  form  is  but  an  elab- 
oration of  society  in  its  rudest  beginnings,  and  that  prin- 
ciples obvious  in  the  simpler  relations  of  men  are  merely 
disguised  and  not  abrogated  or  reversed  by  the  more 
intricate  relations  that  result  from  the  division  of  labor 
and  the  use  of  complex  tools  and  methods.     The  steam 


Chap.  I.  THE  CURRENT  DOCTRINE.  27 

grist  mill,  with  its  complicated  machinery  exhibiting 
every  diversity  of  motion,  is  simply  what  the  rude  stone 
mortar  dug  up  from  an  ancient  river  bed  was  in  its  day 
— an  instrument  for  grinding  corn.  And  every  man 
engaged  in  it,  whether  tossing  wood  into  the  furnace, 
running  the  engine,  dressing  stones,  printing  sacks  or 
keeping  books,  is  really  devoting  his  labor  to  the  same 
purpose  that  the  pre-historic  savage  did  when  he  used 
his  mortar — the  preparation  of  grain  for  human  food. 

And  so,  if  we  reduce  to  their  lowest  terms  all  the  com- 
plex operations  of  modern  production,  we  see  that  each 
individual  who  takes  part  in  this  infinitely  subdivided 
and  intricate  network  of  production  and  exchange  is 
really  doing  what  the  primeval  man  did  when  he  climbed 
the  trees  for  fruit  or  followed  the  receding  tide  for  shell- 
fish— endeavoring  to  obtain  from  nature  by  the  exertion 
of  his  powers  the  satisfaction  of  his  desires.  If  we  keep 
this  firmly  in  mind,  if  we  look  upon  production  as  a 
whole — as  the  co-operation  of  all  embraced  in  any  of  its 
great  groups  to  satisfy  the  various  desires  of  each,  we 
plainly  see  that  the  reward  each  obtains  for  his  exertions 
comes  as  truly  and  as  directly  from  nature  as  the  result 
of  that  exertion,  as  did  that  of  the  first  man. 

To  illustrate:  In  the  simplest  state  of  which  we  can 
conceive,  each  man  digs  his  own  bait  and  catches  his  own 
fish.  The  advantages  of  the  division  of  labor  soon  be- 
come apparent,  and  one  digs  bait  while  the  others  fish. 
Yet  evidently  the  one  who  digs  bait  is  in  reality  doing 
as  much  toward  the  catching  of  fish  as  any  of  those  who 
actually  take  the  fish.  So  when  the  advantages  of  canoes 
are  discovered,  and  instead  of  all  going  a-fishing,  one 
stays  behind  and  makes  and  repairs  canoes,  the  canoe- 
maker  is  in  reality  devoting  his  labor  to  the  taking  of 
fish  as  much  as  the  actual  fishermen,  and  the  fish  which 
he  eats  at  night  when  the  fishermen  come  home  are  as 
truly  the  product  of  his  labor  as  of  theirs.    And  thus 


28  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I. 

when  the  division  of  labor  is  fairly  inaugurated,  and  in- 
stead of  each  attempting  to  satisfy  all  of  his  wants  by 
direct  resort  to  nature,  one  fishes,  another  hunts,  a  third 
picks  berries,  a  fourth  gathers  fruit,  a  fifth  makes  tools, 
a  sixth  builds  huts,  and  a  seventh  prepares  clothing — 
each  one  is  to  the  extent  he  exchanges  the  direct  product 
of  his  own  labor  for  the  direct  product  of  the  labor  of 
others  really  applying  his  own  labor  to  the  production 
of  the  things  he  uses — is  in  effect  satisfying  his  particular 
desires  by  the  exertion  of  his  particular  powers;  that  is 
to  say,  what  he  receives  he  in  reality  produces.  If  he 
digs  roots  and  exchanges  them  for  venison,  he  is  in 
effect  as  truly  the  procurer  of  the  venison  as  though  he 
had  gone  in  chase  of  the  deer  and  left  the  huntsman  to  dig 
his  own  roots.  The  common  expression,  "I  made  so  and 
so,"  signifying  "I  earned  so  and  so,"  or  "I  earned  money 
with  which  I  purchased  so  and  so,"  is,  economically 
speaking,  not  metaphorically  but  literally  true.  Earning 
is  making. 

Now,  if  we  follow  these  principles,  obvious  enough  in 
a  simpler  state  of  society,  through  the  complexities  of 
the  state  we  call  civilized,  we  shall  see  clearly  that  in 
every  case  in  which  labor  is  exchanged  for  commodities, 
production  really  precedes  enjoyment;  that  wages  are 
the  earnings — that  is  to  say,  the  makings  of  labor — not 
the  advances  of  capital,  and  that  the  laborer  who  receives 
his  wages  in  money  (coined  or  printed,  it  may  be,  before 
his  labor  commenced)  really  receives  in  return  for  the 
addition  his  labor  has  made  to  the  general  stock  of 
wealth,  a  draft  upon  that  general  stock,  which  he  may 
utilize  in  any  particular  form  of  wealth  that  will  best 
satisfy  his  desires;  and  that  neither  the  money,  which  is 
but  the  draft,  nor  the  particular  form  of  wealth  which 
he  uses  it  to  call  for,  represents  advances  of  capital  for 
his  maintenance,  but  on  the  contrary  represents  the 
wealth,  or  a  portion  of  the  wealth,  his  labor  has  already 
added  to  the  general  stock. 


Chap.  1.  THE  CUREENT  DOCTRINE.  '  29 

Keeping  these  principles  in  view  we  see  that  the 
draughtsman,  who,  shut  up  in  some  dingy  office  on  the 
banks  of  the  Thames,  is  drawing  the  plans  for  a  great 
marine  engine,  is  in  reality  devoting  his  labor  to  the  pro- 
duction of  bread  and  meat  as  truly  as  though  he  were 
garnering  the  grain  in  California  or  swinging  a  lariat  on 
a  La  Plata  pampa;  that  he  is  as  truly  making  his  own 
clothing  as  though  he  were  shearing  sheep  in  Australia 
or  weaving  cloth  in  Paisley,  and  just  as  effectually  pro- 
ducing the  claret  he  drinks  at  dinner  as  though  he 
gathered  the  grapes  on  the  banks  of  the  Garonne.  The 
miner  who,  two  thousand  feet  under  ground  in  the  heart 
of  the  Comstock,  is  digging  out  silver  ore,  is,  in  effect, 
by  virtue  of  a  thousand  exchanges,  harvesting  crops  in 
valleys  five  thousand  feet  nearer  the  earth's  center;  chas- 
ing the  whale  through  Arctic  icefields;  plucking  tobacco 
leaves  in  Virginia;  picking  coffee  berries  in  Honduras; 
cutting  sugar  cane  on  the  Hawaiian  Islands;  gathering 
cotton  in  Georgia  or  weaving  it  in  Manchester  or  Lowell; 
making  quaint  wooden  toys  for  his  children  in  the 
Hartz  Mountains;  or  plucking  amid  the  green  and  gold 
of  Los  Angeles  orchards  the  oranges  which,  when  his 
shift  is  relieved,  he  will  take  home  to  his  sick  wife.  The 
wages  which  he  receives  on  Saturday  night  at  the  mouth 
of  the  shaft,  what  are  they  but  the  certificate  to  all  the 
world  that  he  has  done  these  things — the  primary  ex- 
change in  the  long  series  which  transmutes  his  labor  into 
the  things  he  has  really  been  laboring  for? 

All  this  is  clear  when  looked  at  in  this  way;  but  to 
meet  this  fallacy  in  all  its  strongholds  and  lurking  places 
we  must  change  our  investigation  from  the  deductive  to 
the  inductive  form.  Let  us  now  see,  if,  beginning  with 
facts  and  tracing  their  relations,  we  arrive  at  the  same 
conclusions  as  are  thus  obvious  when,  beginning  with 
first  principles,  we  trace  their  exemplification  in  complex 
facts. 


CHAPTEK  II. 

THE  MEANING  OP  THE  TERMS. 

Before  proceeding  further  in  our  inquiry,  let  us  make' 
sure  of  the  meaning  of  our  terms,  for  indistinctness  in 
their  use  must  inevitably  produce  ambigui^^^y  and  inde- 
terminateness  in  reasoning.  Not  only  is  it  requisite  in 
economic  reasoning  to  give  to  such  words  as  ''wealth," 
"capital,"  "rent,"  "wages,"  and  the  like,  a  much  more 
definite  sense  than  they  bear  in  common  discourse,  but, 
unfortunately,  even  in  political  economy  there  is,  as  to 
some  of  these  terms,  no  certain  meaning  assigned  by 
common  consent,  different  writers  giving  to  the  same 
term  different  meanings,  and  the  same  writers  often 
using  a  term  in  different  senses.  Nothing  can  add  to  the 
force  of  what  has  been  said  by  so  many  eminent  authors 
as  to  the  importance  of  clear  and  precise  definitions,  save 
the  example,  not  an  infrequent  one,  of  the  same  authors 
falling  into  grave  errors  from  the  very  cause  they  warned 
against.  And  nothing  so  shows  the  importance  of  lan- 
guage in  thought  as  the  spectacle  of  even  acute  thinkers 
basing  important  conclusions  upon  the  use  of  the  same 
word  in  varying  senses.  I  shall  endeavor  to  avoid  these 
dangers.  It  will  be  my  effort  throughout,  as  any  term 
becomes  of  importance,  to  state  clearly  what  I  mean  by 
it,  and  to  use  it  in  that  sense  and  in  no  other.  Let  me 
ask  the  reader  to  note  and  to  bear  in  mind  the  definitions 
thus  given,  as  otherwise  I  cannot  hope  to  make  myself 
properly  understood.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  attach 
arbitrary  meanings  to  words,  or  to  coin  terms,  even  when 


Chap,n.  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  TEEMS.  31 

it  would  be  convenient  to  do  so,  but  shall  conform  to 
usage  as  closely  as  is  possible,  only  endeavoring  so  to  fix 
the  meaning  of  words  that  they  may  clearly  express 
thought. 

What  we  have  now  on  hand  is  to  discover  whether,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  wages  are  drawn  from  capital.  As  a  pre- 
liminary, let  us  settle  what  we  mean  by  wages  and  what 
we  mean  by  capital.  To  the  former  word  a  suflBciently 
definite  meaning  has  been  given  by  economic  writers,  but 
*the  ambiguities  which  have  attached  to  the  use  of  the 
latter  in  political  economy  will  require  a  detailed  exami- 
nation. 

As  used  in  common  discourse  "wages"  means  a  com- 
pensation paid  to  a  hired  person  for  his  services;  and  we 
speak  of  one  man  "working  for  wages,"  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  another  who  is  "working  for  himself."  The  use 
of  the  term  is  still  further  narrowed  by  the  habit  of  ap- 
plying it  solely  to  compensation  paid  for  manual  labor. 
We  do  not  speak  of  the  wages  of  professional  men,  man- 
agers or  clerks,  but  of  their  fees,  commissions,  or  sala- 
ries. Thus  the  common  meaning  of  the  word  wages  is 
the  compensation  paid  to  a  hired  person  for  manual 
labor.  But  in  political  economy  the  word  wages  has  a 
much  wider  meaning,  and  includes  all  returns  for  exer- 
tion. For,  as  political  economists  explain,  the  three 
agents  or  factors  in  production  are  land,  labor,  and  capi- 
tal, and  that  part  of  the  produce  which  goes  to  the  sec- 
ond of  these  factors  is  by  them  styled  wages. 

Thus  the  term  labor  includes  all  human  exertion  in 
the  production  of  wealth,  and  wages,  being  that  part  of 
the  produce  which  goes  to  labor,  includes  all  reward  for 
such  exertion.  There  is,  therefore,  in  the  politico-eco- 
nomic sense  of  the  term  wages  no  distinction  as  to  the 
kind  of  labor,  or  as  to  whether  its  reward  is  received 
through  an  employer  or  not,  but  wages  means  the  return 
received  for  the  exertion  of  labor,  as  distinguished  from 


32  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Booh  I. 

the  return  received  for  the  use  of  capital,  and  the  return 
received  by  the  landholder  for  the  use  of  land.  The  man 
who  cultivates  the  soil  for  himself  receives  his  wages  in 
its  produce,  just  as,  if  he  uses  his  own  capital  and  owns 
his  own  land,  he  may  also  receive  interest  and  rent;  the 
hunter's  wages  are  the  game  he  kills;  the  fisherman's 
wages  are  the  fish  he  takes.  The  gold  washed  out  by  the 
self-employing  gold-digger  is  as  much  his  wages  as  the 
money  paid  to  the  hired  coal  miner  by  the  purchaser  of 
his  labor,*  and,  as  Adam  Smith  shows,  the  high  profits' 
of  retail  storekeepers  are  in  large  part  wages,  being  the 
recompense  of  their  labor  and  not  of  their  capital.  In 
short,  whatever  is  received  as  the  result  or  reward  of  ex- 
ertion is  "wages.'' 

This  is  all  it  is  now  necessary  to  note  as  to  "wages," 
but  it  is  important  to  keep  this  in  mind.  For  in  the 
standard  economic  works  this  sense  of  the  term  wages  is 
recognized  with  greater  or  less  clearness  only  to  be  sub- 
sequently ignored. 

But  it  is  more  diflScult  to  clear  away  from  the  idea  of 
capital  the  ambiguities  that  beset  it,  and  to  fix  the 
scientific  use  of  the  term.  In  general  discourse,  all  sorts 
of  things  that  have  a  value  or  will  yield  a  return  are 
vaguely  spoken  of  as  capital,  while  economic  writers  vary 
so  widely  that  the  term  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  a  fixed 
meaning.  Let  us  compare  with  each  other  the  defini- 
tions of  a  few  representative  writers: 

"That  part  of  a  man's  stock,"  says  Adam  Smith  (Book 
II,  Chap.  I),  "which  he  expects  to  afford  him  a  revenue, 
is  called  his  capital,"  and  the  capital  of  a  country  or 
society,  he  goes  on  to  say,  consists  of  (1)  machines  and 
instruments  of  trade  which  facilitate  and  abridge  labor; 

*  This  was  recognized  in  common  speech  in  California,  where  the 
placer  miners  styled  their  earnings  their  "wages,"  and  spoke  of 
making  high  wages  or  low  wages  according  to  the  amount  of  gold 
taken  out. 


Chap.n.  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  TERMS.  33 

(2)  buildings,  not  mere  dwellings,  but  which  may  be  con- 
sidered instruments  of  trade — such  as  shops,  farmhouses, 
etc.;  (3)  improvements  of  land  which  better  fit  it  for 
tillage  or  culture;  (4)  the  acquired  and  useful  abilities 
of  all  the  inhabitants;  (5)  money;  (6)  provisions  in  the 
hands  of  producers  and  dealers,  from  the  sale  of  which 
they  expect  to  derive  a  profit;  (7)  the  material  of,  or 
partially  completed,  manufactured  articles  still  in  the 
hands  of  producers  or  dealers;  (8)  completed  articles 
still  in  the  hands  of  producers  or  dealers.  The  first  four 
of  these  he  styles  fixed  capital,  and  the  last  four  circulat- 
ing capital,  a  distinction  of  which  it  is  not  necessary  to 
our  purpose  to  take  any  note. 
Kicardo's  definition  is: 

"  Capital  is  that  part  of  the  wealth  of  a  country  which  is  em- 
ployed in  production,  and  consists  of  food,  clothing,  tools,  raw 
materials,  machinery,  etc.,  necessary  to  give  effect  to  labor." — 
Principles  of  Political  Economy,  Chapter  V. 

This  definition,  it  will  be  seen,  is  very  different  from 
that  of  Adam  Smith,  as  it  excludes  many  of  the  things 
which  he  includes — as  acquired  talents,  articles  of  mere 
taste  or  luxury  in  the  possession  of  producers  or  dealers; 
and  includes  some  things  he  excludes — such  as  food, 
clothing,  etc.,  in  the  possession  of  the  consumer. 

McCuUoch's  definition  is: 

"  The  capital  of  a  nation  really  comprises  all  those  portions  of  the 
produce  of  industry  existing  in  it  that  may  be  directly  employed 
either  to  support  human  existence  or  to  facilitate  production." — 
Ifotea  on  Wealth  of  Nations,  Book  II,  Chap.  I. 

This  definition  follows  the  line  of  Ricardo's,  but  is 
wider.  While  it  excludes  everything  that  is  not  capable 
of  aiding  production,  it  includes  everything  that  is  so 
capable,  without  reference  to  actual  use  or  necessity  for 
use — ^the  horse  drawing  a  pleasure  carriage  being,  accord- 
ing to  McCulloch's  view,  as  he  expressly  states,  as  much 


d4  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

capital  as  the  horse  drawing  a  plow,  because  he  may,  if 
need  arises,  be  used  to  draw  a  plow. 

John  Stuart  Mill,  following  the  same  general  line  as 
Eicardo  and  McCulloch,  makes  neither  the  use  nor  the 
capability  of  use,  but  the  determination  to  use,  the  test 
of  capital.     He  says: 

"  Whatever  things  are  destined  to  supply  productive  labor  with 
the  shelter,  protection,  tools  and  materials  which  the  work  requires, 
and  to  feed  and  otherwise  maintain  the  laborer  during  the  process, 
are  capital." — Principles  of  Political  JSconomy,  Book  I,  Chap.  IV. 

These  quotations  sufiSciently  illustrate  the  divergence 
of  the  masters.  Among  minor  authors  the  variance  is 
still  greater,  as  a  few  examples  will  suflBce  to  show. 

Professor  Wayland,  whose  "Elements  of  Political 
Economy"  has  long  been  a  favorite  text-book  in  Amer- 
ican educational  institutions,  where  there  has  been  any 
pretense  of  teaching  political  economy,  gives  this  lucid 
definition: 

**  The  word  capital  is  used  in  two  senses.  In  relation  to  product 
it  means  any  substance  on  which  industry  is  to  be  exerted.  In  re- 
lation to  industry,  the  material  on  which  industry  is  about  to  confer 
value,  that  on  which  it  has  conferred  value;  the  instruments  which 
are  used  for  the  conferring  of  value,  as  well  as  the  means  of  suste- 
nance by  which  the  being  is  supported  while  he  is  engaged  in  per- 
forming the  operation." — Elements  of  Political  Economy,  Book  I, 
Chap.  I. 

Henry  C.  Carey,  the  American  apostle  of  protection- 
ism, defines  capital  as  "the  instrument  by  which  man 
obtains  mastery  over  nature,  including  in  it  the  physical 
and  mental  powers  of  man  himself."  Professor  Perry,  a 
Massachusetts  free  trader,  very  properly  objects  to  this 
that  it  hopelessly  confuses  the  boundaries  between  capi- 
tal and  labor,  and  then  himself  hopelessly  confuses  the 
boundaries  between  capital  and  land  by  defining  capital 
as  "any  valuable  thing  outside  of  man  himself  from 
whose  use  springs  a  pecuniary  increase  or  profit."    An 


Chap.n  THE   MEANING  OF  THE  TERMS.  35 

English  economic  writer  of  high  standing,  Mr.  Wm. 
Thornton,  begins  an  elaborate  examination  of  the  rela- 
tions of  labor  and  capital  ("On  Labor")  by  stating  that 
he  will  include  land  with  capital,  which  is  very  much  as 
if  one  who  proposed  to  teach  algebra  should  begin  with 
the  declaration  that  he  would  consider  the  signs  plus  and 
minus  as  meaning  the  same  thing  and  having  the  same 
value.  An  American  writer,  also  of  high  standing.  Pro- 
fessor Francis  A.  Walker,  makes  the  same  declaration  in 
his  elaborate  book  on  "The  Wages  Question."  Another 
English  writer,  N.  A.  Nicholson  ("The  Science  of  Ex- 
changes," London,  1873),  seems  to  cap  the  climax  of 
absurdity  by  declaring  in  one  paragraph  (p.  26)  that 
"capital  must  of  course  be  accumulated  by  saving,"  and 
in  the  very  next  paragraph  stating  that  "the  land  which 
produces  a  crop,  the  plow  which  turns  the  soil,  the  labor 
which  secures  the  produce,  and  the  produce  itself,  if  a 
material  profit  is  to  be  derived  from  its  employment,  are  all 
alike  capital."  But  how  land  and  labor  are  to  be  accu- 
mulated by  saving  them  he  nowhere  condescends  to  ex- 
plain. In  the  same  way  a  standard  American  writer. 
Professor  Amasa  Walker  (p.  66,  "Science  of  Wealth"), 
first  declares  that  capital  arises  from  the  net  savings  of 
labor  and  then  immediately  afterward  declares  that  land 
is  capital. 

I  might  go  on  for  pages,  citing  contradictory  and  self- 
contradictory  definitions.  But  it  would  only  weary  the 
reader.  It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  quotations.  Those 
already  given  are  sufficient  to  show  how  wide  a  difference 
exists  as  to  the  comprehension  of  the  term  capital.  Any 
one  who  wants  further  illustration  of  the  "confusion 
worse  confounded"  which  exists  on  this  subject  among 
the  professors  of  political  economy  may  find  it  in  any 
library  where  the  works  of  these  professors  are  ranged 
side  by  side. 

Now,  it  makes  little  difference  what  name  we  give  to 


36  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

things,  if  when  we  use  the  name  we  always  keep  in  view 
the  same  things  and  no  others.  But  the  difficulty  arising 
in  economic  reasoning  from  these  vague  and  varying 
definitions  of  capital  is  that  it  is  only  in  the  premises  of 
reasoning  that  the  term  is  used  in  the  peculiar  sense  as- 
signed by  the  definition,  while  in  the  practical  conclusions 
that  are  reached  it  is  always  used,  or  at  least  it  is  always 
understood,  in  one  general  and  definite  sense.  When, 
for  instance,  it  is  said  that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital, 
the  word  capital  is  understood  in  the  same  sense  as  when 
we  speak  of  the  scarcity  or  abundance,  the  increase  or 
decrease,  the  destruction  or  increment,  of  capital — a  com- 
monly understood  and  definite  sense  which  separates 
capital  from  the  other  factors  of  production,  land  and 
labor,  and  also  separates  it  from  like  things  used  merely 
for  gratification.  In  fact,  most  people  understand  well 
enough  what  capital  is  until  they  begin  to  define  it,  and 
I  think  their  works  will  show  that  the  economic  writers 
who  differ  so  widely  in  their  definitions  use  the  term  in 
this  commonly  understood  sense  in  all  cases  except  in 
their  definitions  and  the  reasoning  based  on  them. 

This  common  sense  of  the  term  is  that  of  wealth  de- 
voted to  procuring  more  wealth.  Dr.  Adam  Smith  cor- 
rectly expresses  this  common  idea  when  he  says:  "That 
part  of  a  man's  stock  which  he  expects  to  afford  him 
revenue  is  called  his  capital.'*  And  the  capital  of  a 
community  is  evidently  the  sum  of  such  individual 
stocks,  or  that  part  of  the  aggregate  stock  which  is  ex- 
pected to  procure  more  wealth.  This  also  is  the  deriva- 
tive sense  of  the  term.  The  word  capital,  as  philologists 
trace  it,  comes  down  to  us  from  a  time  when  wealth  was 
estimated  in  cattle,  and  a  man's  income  depended  upon 
the  number  of  head  he  could  keep  for  their  increase. 

The  difficulties  which  beset  the  use  of  the  word  capi- 
tal, as  an  exact  term,  and  which  are  even  more  strikingly 
exemplified  in  current  political  and  social  discussions 


Chap.  II.  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  TERMS.  37 

than  in  the  definitions  of  economic  writers,  arise  from 
two  facts — first,  that  certain  classes  of  things,  the  pos- 
session of  which  to  the  individual  is  precisely  equivalent 
to  the  possession  of  capital,  are  not  part  of  the  capital  of 
the  community;  and,  second,  that  things  of  the  same 
kind  may  or  may  not  be  capital,  according  to  the  pur- 
pose to  which  they  are  devoted. 

With  a  little  care  as  to  these  points,  there  should  be 
no  difficulty  in  obtaining  a  sufficiently  clear  and  fixed 
idea  of  what  the  term  capital  as  generally  used  properly 
includes;  such  an  idea  as  will  enable  us  to  say  what 
things  are  capital  and  what  are  not,  and  to  use  the  word 
without  ambiguity  or  slip. 

Land,  labor,  and  capital  are  the  three  factors  of  pro- 
duction. If  we  remember  that  capital  is  thus  a  term  used 
in  contradistinction  to  land  and  labor,  we  at  once  see 
that  nothing  properly  included  under  either  one  of  these 
terms  can  be  properly  classed  as  capital.  The  term  land 
necessarily  includes,  not  merely  the  surface  of  the  earth 
as  distinguished  from  the  water  and  the  air,  but  the 
whole  material  universe  outside  of  man  himself,  for  it  is 
only  by  having  access  to  land,  from  which  his  very  body 
is  drawn,  that  man  can  come  in  contact  with  or  use 
nature.  The  term  land  embraces,  in  short,  all  natural 
materials,  forces,  and  opportunities,  and,  therefore, 
nothing  that  is  freely  supplied  by  nature  can  be  properly 
classed  as  capital.  A  fertile  field,  a  rich  vein  of  ore,  a  fall- 
ing stream  which  supplies  power,  may  give  to  the  possessor 
advantages  equivalent  to  the  possession  of  capital,  but  to 
class  such  things  as  capital  would  be  to  put  an  end  to  the 
distinction  between  land  and  capital,  and,  so  far  as  they 
relate  to  each  other,  to  make  the  two  terms  meaningless. 
The  term  labor,  in  like  manner,  includes  all  human 
exertion,  and  hence  human  powers  whether  natural  or 
acquired  can  never  properly  be  classed  as  capital.  In 
common  parlance  we  often  speak  of  a  man's  knowledge, 


X  >  r:-  r^.*->r'/Tk 


38  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I. 

skill,  or  industry  as  constituting  his  capital;  but  this  is 
evidently  a  metaphorical  use  of  language  that  must  be 
eschewed  in  reasoning  that  aims  at  exactness.  Superi- 
ority in  such  qualities  may  augment  the  income  of  an 
individual  just  as  capital  would,  and  an  increase  in  the 
knowledge,  skill,  or  industry  of  a  community  may  have 
the  same  eftect  in  increasing  its  production  as  would  an 
increase  of  capital;  but  this  effect  is  due  to  the  increased 
power  of  labor  and  not  to  capital.  Increased  velocity 
may  give  to  the  impact  of  a  cannon  ball  the  same  effect 
as  increased  weight,  yet,  nevertheless,  weight  is  one 
thing  and  velocity  another. 

Thus  we  must  exclude  from  the  category  of  capital 
everything  that  may  be  included  either  as  land  or  labor. 
Doing  so,  there  remain  only  things  which  are  neither 
land  nor  labor,  but  which  have  resulted  from  the  union 
of  these  two  original  factors  of  production.  Nothing 
can  be  properly  capital  that  does  not  consist  of  these — 
that  is  to  say,  nothing  can  be  capital  that  is  not  wealth. 

But  it  is  from  ambiguities  in  the  use  of  this  inclusive 
term  wealth  that  many  of  the  ambiguities  which  beset 
the  term  capital  are  derived. 

As  commonly  used  the  word  "wealth"  is  applied  to 
anything  having  an  exchange  value.  But  when  used  as  a 
term  of  political  economy  it  must  be  limited  to  a  much 
more  definite  meaning,  because  many  things  are  commonly 
spoken  of  as  wealth  which  in  taking  account  of  collective 
or  general  wealth  cannot  be  considered  as  wealth  at  all. 
Such  things  have  an  exchange  value,  and  are  commonly 
spoken  of  as  wealth,  insomuch  as  they  represent  as  be- 
tween individuals,  or  between  sets  of  individuals,  the 
power  of  obtaining  wealth;  but  they  are  not  truly  wealth, 
inasmuch  as  their  increase  or  decrease  does  not  affect  the 
sum  of  wealth.  Such  are  bonds,  mortgages,  promissory 
notes,  bank  bills,  or  other  stipulations  for  the  transfer  of 
wealth.     Such  are  slaves,  whose  value  represents  merely 


Chap.lL  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  TERMS.  39 

the  power  of  one  class  to  appropriate  the  earnings  of 
another  class.  Such  are  lands,  or  other  natural  oppor- 
tunities, the  value  of  which  is  but  the  result  of  the  ac- 
knowledgment in  favor  of  certain  persons  of  an  exclusive 
right  to  their  use,  and  which  represents  merely  the 
power  thus  given  to  the  owners  to  demand  a  share  of  the 
wealth  produced  by  those  who  use  them.  Increase  in 
the  amount  of  bonds,  mortgages,  notes,  or  bank  bills 
cannot  increase  the  wealth  of  the  community  that  in- 
cludes as  well  those  who  promise  to  pay  as  those  who  are 
entitled  to  receive.  The  enslavement  of  a  part  of  their 
number  could  not  increase  the  wealth  of  a  people,  for 
what  the  enslavers  gained  the  enslaved  would  lose.  In- 
crease in  land  values  does  not  represent  increase  in  the 
common  wealth,  for  what  land  owners  gain  by  higher 
prices,  the  tenants  or  purchasers  who  must  pay  them 
will  lose.  And  all  this  relative  wealth,  which,  in  com- 
mon thought  and  speech,  in  legislation  and  law,  is  un- 
distinguished from  actual  wealth,  could,  without  the 
destruction  or  consumption  of  anything  more  than  a  few 
drops  of  ink  and  a  piece  of  paper,  be  utterly  annihilated. 
By  enactment  of  the  sovereign  political  power  debts 
might  be  canceled,  slaves  emancipated,  and  land  resumed 
as  the  common  property  of  the  whole  people,  without  the 
aggregate  wealth  being  diminished  by  the  value  of  a 
pinch  of  snuff,  for  what  some  would  lose  others  would 
gain.  There  would  be  no  more  destruction  of  wealth 
than  there  was  creation  of  wealth  when  Elizabeth  Tudor 
enriched  her  favorite  courtiers  by  the  grant  of  mo- 
nopolies, or  when  Boris  Godoonof  made  Bussian  peasants 
merchantable  property.  - 

All  things  which  have  an  exchange  value  are,  therefore, 
not  wealth,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  the  term  can  be 
used  in  political  economy.  Only  such  things  can  be 
wealth  the  production  of  which  increases  and  the  destruc- 
tion  of  which  decreases  the  aggregate  of  wealth.    If  we 


40  WAGES  AND   CAPITAL.  Book  I 

consider  what  these  things  are,  and  what  their  nature  is, 
we  shall  have  no  difficulty  in  defining  wealth. 

When  we  speak  of  a  community  increasing  in  wealth 
— as  when  we  say  that  England  has  increased  in  wealth 
since  the  accession  of  Victoria,  or  that  California  is  a 
wealthier  country  than  when  it  was  a  Mexican  territory 
— we  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  is  more  land,  or  that 
the  natural  powers  of  the  land  are  greater,  or  that  there 
are  more  people,  for  when  we  ^ish  to  express  that  idea 
we  speak  of  increase  of  population;  or  that  the  debts  or 
dues  owing  by  some  of  these  people  to  others  of  their 
number  have  increased;  but  we  mean  that  there  is  an  in- 
crease of  certain  tangible  things,  having  an  actual  and 
not  merely  a  relative  value — such  as  buildings,  cattle, 
tools,  machinery,  agricultural  and  mineral  products, 
manufactured  goods,  ships,  wagons,  furniture,  and  the 
like.  The  increase  of  such  things  constitutes  an  increase 
of  wealth;  their  decrease  is  a  lessening  of  wealth;  and 
the  community  that,  in  proportion  to  its  numbers,  has 
most  of  such  things  is  the  wealthiest  community.  The 
common  character  of  these  things  is  that  they  consist  of 
natural  substances  or  products  which  have  been  adapted 
by  human  labor  to  human  use  or  gratification,  their  value 
depending  on  the  amount  of  labor  which  upon  the  aver- 
age would  be  required  to  produce  things  of  like  kind. 

Thus  wealth,  as  alone  the  term  can  be  used  in  political 
economy,  consists  of  natural  products  that  have  been  se- 
cured, moved,  combined,  separated,  or  in  other  ways 
modified  by  human  exertion,  so  as  to  fit  them  for  the 
gratification  of  human  desires.  It  is,  in  other  words, 
labor  impressed  upon  matter  in  such  a  way  as  to  store 
up,  as  the  heat  of  the  sun  is  stored  up  in  coal,  the  power 
of  human  labor  to  minister  to  human  desires.  Wealth  is 
not  the  sole  object  of  labor,  for  labor  is  also  expended  in 
ministering  directly  to  desire;  but  it  is  the  object  and 
result  of  what  we  call  productive  labor — that  is,  labor 


Chap.  II.  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  TERMS.  41 

which  gives  value  to  material  things.  Nothing  which 
nature  supplies  to  man  without  his  labor  is  wealth,  nor 
yet  does  the  expenditure  of  labor  result  in  wealth  unless 
there  is  a  tangible  product  which  has  and  retains  the 
power  of  ministering  to  desire. 

Now,  as  capital  is  wealth  devoted  to  a  certain  purpose, 
nothing  can  be  capital  which  does  not  fall  within  this 
definition  of  wealth.  By  recognizing  and  keeping  this 
in  mind,  we  get  rid  of  misconceptions  which  vitiate  all 
reasoning  in  which  they  are  permitted,  which  befog  pop- 
ular thought,  and  have  led  into  mazes  of  contradiction 
even  acute  thinkers. 

But  though  all  capital  is  wealth,  all  wealth  is  not  capi- 
tal. Capital  is  only  a  part  of  wealth — that  part,  namely, 
which  is  devoted  to  the  aid  of  production.  It  is  in  draw- 
ing this  line  between  the  wealth  that  is  and  the  wealth 
that  is  not  capital  that  a  second  class  of  misconceptions 
are  likely  to  occur. 

The  errors  which  I  have  been  pointing  out,  and  which 
consist  in  confounding  with  wealth  and  capital  things 
essentially  distinct,  or  which  have  but  a  relative  exist- 
ence, are  now  merely  vulgar  errors.  They  are  wide- 
spread, it  is  true,  and  have  a  deep  root,  being  held,  not 
merely  by  the  less  educated  classes,  but  seemingly  by  a 
large  majority  of  those  who  in  such  advanced  countries 
as  England  and  the  United  States  mold  and  guide  public 
opinion,  make  the  laws  in  Parliaments,  Congresses  and 
Legislatures,  and  administer  them  in  the  courts.  They 
crop  out,  moreover,  in  the  disquisitions  of  many  of  those 
flabby  writers  who  have  burdened  the  press  and  dark- 
ened counsel  by  numerous  volumes  which  are  dubbed 
political  economy,  and  which  pass  as  text-books  with  the 
ignorant  and  as  authority  with  those  who  do  not  think 
for  themselves.  Neverthless,  they  are  only  vulgar  errors, 
inasmuch  as  they  receive  no  countenance  from  the  best 
writers  on  political  economy.    By  one  of  those  lapses 


42  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

which  flaw  his  great  work  and  strikingly  evince  the  im- 
perfections of  the  highest  talent,  Adam  Smith  counts  as 
capital  certain  personal  qualities,  an  inclusion  which  is 
not  consistent  with  his  original  definition  of  capital  as 
stock  from  which  revenue  is  expected.  But  this  error 
has  been  avoided  by  his  most  eminent  successors,  and  in 
the  definitions,  previously  given,  of  Ricardo,  McCulloch, 
and  Mill,  it  is  not  involved.  Neither  in  their  defini- 
tions nor  in  that  of  Smith  is  involved  the  vulgar  error 
which  confounds  as  real  capital  things  which  are  only  rela- 
tively capital,  such  as  evidences  of  debt,  land  values,  etc. 
But  as  to  things  which  are  really  wealth,  their  definitions 
differ  from  each  other,  and  widely  from  that  of  Smith, 
as  to  what  is  and  what  is  not  to  be  considered  as  capital. 
The  stock  of  a  jeweler  would,  for  instance,  be  included 
as  capital  by  the  definition  of  Smith,  and  the  food  or 
clothing  in  possession  of  a  laborer  would  be  excluded. 
But  tlie  definitions  of  Ricardo  and  McCulloch  would  ex- 
clude the  stock  of  the  jeweler,  as  would  also  that  of  Mill, 
if  understood  as  most  persons  would  understand  the 
words  I  have  quoted.  But  as  explained  by  him,  it  is 
neither  the  nature  nor  the  destination  of  the  things 
themselves  which  determines  whether  they  are  or  are  not 
capital,  but  the  intention  of  the  owner  to  devote  either 
the  things  or  the  value  received  from  their  sale  to  the 
supply  of  productive  labor  with  tools,  materials,  and 
maintenance.  All  these  definitions,  however,  agree  in 
including  as  capital  the  provisions  and  clothing  of  the 
laborer,  which  Smith  excludes. 

Let  us  consider  these  three  definitions,  which  repre- 
sent the  best  teachings  of  current  political  economy: 

To  McCulloch*s  definition  of  capital  as  *'all  those  por- 
tions of  the  produce  of  industry  that  may  be  directly 
employed  either  to  support  human  existence  or  to  facil- 
itate production,'*  there  are  obvious  objections.  One 
may  pass  along  any  principal  street  in  a  thriving  town 


Chap.n.  THE  MEANING   OF  THE  TERMS.  43 

or  city  and  see  stores  filled  with  all  sorts  of  valuable 
things,  which,  though  they  cannot  be  employed  either 
to  support  human  existence  or  to  facilitate  production, 
undoubtedly  constitute  part  of  tlie  capital  of  the  store- 
keepers and  part  of  the  capital  of  the  community.  And 
he  can  also  see  products  of  industry  capable  of  support- 
ing human  existence  or  facilitating  production  being 
consumed  in  ostentation  or  useless  luxury.  Surely  these, 
though  they  might,  do  not  constitute  part  of  capital. 

Eicardo's  definition  avoids  including  as  capital  things 
which  might  be  but  are  not  employed  in  production,  by 
covering  only  such  as  are  employed.  But  it  is  open  to 
the  first  objection  made  to  McOulloch's.  If  only  wealth 
that  may  be,  or  that  is,  or  that  is  destined  to  be,  used  in 
supporting  producers,  or  assisting  production,  is  capital, 
then  the  stocks  of  jewelers,  toy  dealers,  tobacconists, 
confectioners,  picture  dealers,  etc. — in  fact,  all  stocks 
that  consist  of,  and  all  stocks  in  so  far  as  they  consist  of 
articles  of  luxury,  are  not  capital. 

If  Mill,  by  remitting  the  distinction  to  the  mind  of  the 
capitalist,  avoids  this  difficulty  (which  does  not  seem  to 
me  clear),  it  is  by  making  the  distinction  so  vague  that 
no  power  short  of  omnisicence  could  tell  in  any  given 
country  at  any  given  time  what  was  and  what  was  not 
capital. 

But  the  great  defect  which  these  definitions  have  in 
common  is  that  they  include  what  clearly  cannot  be  ac- 
counted capital,  if  any  distinction  is  to  be  made  between 
laborer  and  capitalist.  For  they  bring  into  the  category 
of  capital  the  food,  clothing,  etc.,  in  the  possession  of 
the  day  laborer,  which  he  will  consume  whether  he 
works  or  not,  as  well  as  the  stock  in  the  hands  of  the 
capitalist,  with  which  he  proposes  to  pay  the  laborer  for 
his  work. 

Yet,  manifestly,  this  is  not  the  sense  in  which  the 
term  capital  is  used  by  these  writers  when  they  speak  of 


44  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Boole  I. 

labor  and  capital  as  taking  separate  parts  in  the  work  of 
production  and  separate  shares  in  the  distribution  of  its 
proceeds;  when  they  speak  of  wages  as  drawn  from  capi- 
tal, or  as  depending  upon  the  ratio  between  labor  and 
capital,  or  in  any  of  the  ways  in  which  the  term  is  gen- 
erally used  by  them.  In  all  these  cases  the  term  capital 
is  used  in  its  commonly  understood  sense,  as  that  portion 
of  wealth  which  its  owners  do  not  propose  to  use  directly 
for  their  own  gratification,  but  for  the  purpose  of  obtain- 
ing more  wealth.  In  short,  by  political  economists,  in 
everything  except  their  definitions  and  first  principles, 
as  well  as  by  the  world  at  large,  "that  part  of  a  man's 
stock,"  to  use  the  words  of  Adam  Smith,  "which  he  ex- 
pects to  afford  him  revenue  is  called  his  capital."  This 
is  the  only  sense  in  which  the  term  capital  expresses  any 
fixed  idea — the  only  sense  in  which  we  can  with  any 
clearness  separate  it  from  wealth  and  contrast  it  with 
labor.  For,  if  we  must  consider  as  capital  everything 
which  supplies  the  laborer  with  food,  clothing,  shelter, 
etc.,  then  to  find  a  laborer  who  is  not  a  capitalist  we  shall 
be  forced  to  hunt  up  an  absolutely  naked  man,  destitute 
even  of  a  sharpened  stick,  or  of  a  burrow  in  the  ground 
— a  situation  in  which,  save  as  the  result  of  exceptional 
circumstances,  human  beings  have  never  yet  been  found. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  variance  and  inexactitude  in 
these  definitions  arise  from  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  what 
capital  is  has  been  deduced  from  a  preconceived  idea  of 
how  capital  assists  production.  Instead  of  determining 
what  capital  is,  and  then  observing  what  capital  does, 
the  functions  of  capital  have  first  been  assumed,  and 
then  a  definition  of  capital  made  which  includes  all 
things  which  do  or  may  perform  those  functions.  Let 
us  reverse  this  process,  and,  adopting  the  natural  order, 
ascertain  what  the  thing  is  before  settling  what  it  does. 
All  we  are  trying  to  do,  all  that  it  is  necessary  to  do,  is  to 
fix,  as  it  were,  the  metes  and  bounds  of  a  term  that  in 


Chap.n.  THE   MEANING   OF  THE  TERMS.  46 

the  main  is  well  apprehended — to  make  definite,  that  is, 
sharp  and  clear  on  its  verges,  a  common  idea. 

If  the  articles  of  actual  wealth  existing  at  a  given  time 
in  a  given  community  were  presented  in  situ  to  a  dozen 
intelligent  men  who  had  never  read  a  line  of  political 
economy,  it  is  doubtful  if  they  would  differ  in  respect  to 
a  single  item,  as  to  whether  it  should  be  accounted  capi- 
tal or  not.  Money  which  its  owner  holds  for  use  in  his 
business  or  in  speculation  would  be  accounted  capital; 
money  set  aside  for  household  or  personal  expenses 
would  not.  That  part  of  a  farmer's  crop  held  for  sale  or 
for  seed,  or  to  feed  his  help  in  part  payment  of  wages, 
would  be  accounted  capital;  that  held  for  the  use  of  his 
own  family  would  not  be.  The  horses  and  carriage  of 
a  hackman  would  be  classed  as  capital,  but  an  equipage 
kept  for  the  pleasure  of  its  owner  would  not.  So  no  one 
would  think  of  counting  as  capital  the  false  hair  on  the 
head  of  a  woman,  the  cigar  in  the  mouth  of  a  smoker,  or 
the  toy  with  which  a  child  is  playing;  but  the  stock  of  a 
hair  dealer,  of  a  tobacconist,  or  of  the  keeper  of  a  toy 
store,  would  be  unhesitatingly  set  down  as  capital.  A 
coat  which  a  tailor  had  made  for  sale  would  be  accounted 
capital,  but  not  the  coat  he  had  made  for  himself.  Food 
in  the  possession  of  a  hotel-keeper  or  a  restaurateur 
would  be  accounted  capital,  but  not  the  food  in  the 
pantry  of  a  housewife,  or  in  the  lunch  basket  of  a  work- 
man. Pig  iron  in  the  hands  of  the  smelter,  or  founder, 
or  dealer,  would  be  accounted  capital,  but  not  the  pig 
iron  used  as  ballast  in  the  hold  of  a  yacht.  The  bellows 
of  a  blacksmith,  the  looms  of  a  factory,  would  be  capital, 
but  not  the  sewing  machine  of  a  woman  who  does  only 
her  own  work;  a  building  let  for  hire,  or  used  for  busi- 
ness or  productive  purposes,  but  not  a  homestead.  In 
short,  I  think  we  should  find  that  now,  as  when  Dr. 
Adam  Smith  wrote,  "that  part  of  a  man's  stock  which  he 
expects  to  yield  him  a  revenue  is  called  his  capital." 


46  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I. 

And,  omitting  his  unfortunate  slip  as  to  personal  quali- 
ties, and  qualifying  somewhat  his  enumeration  of  money, 
it  is  doubtful  if  we  could  better  list  the  different  articles 
of  capital  than  did  Adam  Smith  in  the  passage  which  in 
the  previous  part  of  this  chapter  I  have  condensed. 

Now,  if,  after  having  thus  separated  the  wealth  that  is 
capital  from  the  wealth  that  is  not  capital,  we  look  for 
the  distinction  between  the  two  classes,  we  shall  not  find 
it  to  be  as  to  the  character,  capabilities,  or  final  destina- 
tion of  the  things  themselves,  as  has  been  vainly  at- 
tempted to  draw  it;  bi^t  it  seems  to  me  that  we  shall  find 
it  to  be  as  to  whether  they  are  or  are  not  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  consumer.*  Such  articles  of  wealth  as  in 
themselves,  in  their  uses,  or  in  their  products,  are  yet  to 
be  exchanged  are  capital;  such  articles  of  wealth  as  are  in 
the  hands  of  the  consumer  are  not  capital.  Hence,  if  we 
define  capital  as  wealth  in  course  of  exchange,  understand- 
ing exchange  to  include  not  merely  the  passing  from  hand 
to  hand,  but  also  such  transmutations  as  occur  when  the 
reproductive  or  transforming  forces  of  nature  are  utilized 
for  the  increase  of  wealth,  we  shall,  I  think,  comprehend 
all  the  things  that  the  general  idea  of  capital  properly 
includes,  and  shut  out  all  it  does  not.  Under  this  defini- 
tion, it  seems  to  me,  for  instance,  will  fall  all  such  tools 
as  are  really  capital.  For  it  is  as  to  whether  its  services 
or  uses  are  to  be  exchanged  or  not  which  makes  a  tool 
an  article  of  capital  or  merely  an   article   of  wealth. 

*  Money  may  be  said  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the  consumer  when 
devoted  to  the  procurement  of  gratification,  as,  though  not  in  itself 
devoted  to  consumption,  it  represents  wealth  which  is;  and  thus 
what  in  the  previous  paragraph  I  have  given  as  the  common  classifi- 
cation would  be  covered  by  this  distinction,  and  would  be  substan- 
tially correct.  In  speaking  of  money  in  this  connection,  I  am  of 
course  speaking  of  coin,  for  although  paper  money  may  perform  all 
the  functions  of  coin,  it  is  not  wealth,  and  cannot  therefore  be 
capital. 


Chap.U.  THE  MEAITINQ  OF  THE  TERMS.  47 

Thus,  the  lathe  of  a  manufacturer  used  in  making  things 
which  are  to  be  exchanged  is  capital,  while  the  lathe  kept 
by  a  gentleman  for  his  own  amusement  is  not.  Thus, 
wealth  used  in  the  construction  of  a  railroad,  a  public 
telegraph  line,  a  stage  coach,  a  theater,  a  hotel,  etc.,  may 
be  said  to  be  placed  in  the  course  of  exchange.  The  ex- 
change is  not  effected  all  at  once,  but  little  by  little,  with 
an  indefinite  number  of  people.  Yet  there  is  an  ex- 
change, and  the  "consumers"  of  the  railroad,  the  tele- 
graph line,  the  stage  coach,  theater  or  hotel,  are  not  the 
owners,  but  the  persons  who  from  time  to  time  use  them. 

Nor  is  this  definition  inconsistent  with  the  idea  that 
capital  is  that  part  of  wealth  devoted  to  production.  It 
is  too  narrow  an  understanding  of  production  which  con- 
fines it  merely  to  the  making  of  things.  Production  in- 
cludes not  merely  the  making  of  things,  but  the  bringing 
of  them  to  the  consumer.  The  merchant  or  storekeeper 
is  thus  as  truly  a  producer  as  is  the  manufacturer,  or 
farmer,  and  his  stock  or  capital  is  as  much  devoted  to 
production  as  is  theirs.  But  it  is  not  worth  while  now 
to  dwell  upon  the  functions  of  capital,  which  we  shall  be 
better  able  to  determine  hereafter.  Nor  is  the  definition 
of  capital  I  have  suggested  of  any  importance.  I  am  not 
writing  a  text-book,  but  only  attempting  to  discover  the 
laws  which  control  a  great  social  problem,  and  if  the 
reader  has  been  led  to  form  a  clear  idea  of  what  things 
are  meant  when  we  speak  of  capital  my  purpose  is  served. 

But  before  closing  this  digression  let  me  call  attention 
to  what  is  often  forgotten — namely,  that  the  terms 
"wealth,"  "capital,"  "wages,"  and  the  like,  as  used  in 
political  economy  are  abstract  terms,  and  that  nothing 
can  be  generally  affirmed  or  denied  of  them  that  cannot 
be  affirmed  or  denied  of  the  whole  class  of  things  they 
represent.  The  failure  to  bear  this  in  mind  has  led  to 
much  confusion  of  thought,  and  permits  fallacies,  other- 
wise transparent,  to  pass  for  obvious  truths.    Wealth 


48  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Booh  L 

being  an  abstract  term,  the  idea  of  wealth,  it  must  be 
remembered,  involves  the  idea  of  exchange  ability.  The 
possession  of  wealth  to  a  certain  amount  is  potentially 
the  possession  of  any  or  all  species  of  wealth  to  that 
equivalent  in  exchange.  And,  consequently,  so  of 
capital. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WAGES  NOT    DBAWN  FROM    CAPITAL,   BUT  PRODUCED    BY 
THE  LABOR. 

The  importance  of  this  digression  will,  I  think,  be- 
come more  and  more  apparent  as  we  proceed  in  our  in- 
quiry, but  its  pertinency  to  the  branch  we  are  now 
engaged  in  may  at  once  be  seen. 

It  is  at  first  glance  evident  that  the  economic  meaning 
of  the  term  wages  is  lost  sight  of,  and  attention  is  con- 
centrated upon  the  common  and  narrow  meaning  of  the 
word,  when  it  is  affirmed  that  wages  are  drawn  from 
capital.  For,  in  all  those  cases  in  which  the  laborer  is 
his  own  employer  and  takes  directly  the  produce  of  his 
labor  as  its  reward,  it  is  plain  enough  that  wages  are  not 
drawn  from  capital,  but  result  directly  as  the  product  of 
the  labor.  If,  for  instance,  I  devote  my  labor  to  gather- 
ing birds'  eggs  or  picking  wild  berries,  the  eggs  or  berries 
I  thus  get  are  my  wages.  Surely  no  one  will  contend 
that  in  such  a  case  wages  are  drawn  from  capital.  There 
is  no  capital  in  the  case.  An  absolutely  naked  man, 
thrown  on  an  island  where  no  human  being  has  before 
trod,  may  gather  birds*  eggs  or  pick  berries. 

Or  if  I  take  a  piece  of  leather  and  work  it  up  into  a 
pair  of  shoes,  the  sho^s  are  my  wages — the  reward  of  my 
exertion.  Surely  they  are  not  drawn  from  capital — 
either  my  capital  or  any  one  else's  capital — but  are 
brought  into  existence  by  the  labor  of  which  they  become 
the  wages;  and  in  obtaining  this  pair  of  shoes  as  the 
wages  of  my  labor,  capital  is  not  even  momentarily  less- 


60  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  BooTcI. 

ened  one  iota.  For,  if  we  call  in  the  idea  of  capital,  my 
capital  at  the  beginning  consists  of  the  piece  of  leather, 
the  thread,  etc.  As  my  labor  goes  on,  value  is  steadily 
added,  until,  when  my  labor  results  in  the  finished  shoes, 
I  have  my  capital  plus  the  difference  in  value  between 
the  material  aijd  the  shoes.  In  obtaining  this  additional 
value — my  wages — how  is  capital  at  any  time  drawn 
upon? 

Adam  Smith,  who  gave  the  direction  to  economic 
thought  that  has  resulted  in  the  current  elaborate  theories 
of  the  relation  between  wages  and  capital,  recognized  the 
fact  that  in  such  simple  cases  as  I  have  instanced,  wages 
are  the  produce  of  labor,  and  thus  begins  his  chapter 
upon  the  wages  of  labor  (Chapter  VIII) : 

"  The  produce  of  labor  constitutes  tTie  natural  recompense  or  wages 
of  labor.  In  that  original  state  of  things  which  precedes  both  the 
appropriation  of  land  and  the  accumulation  of  stock,  the  whole 
produce  of  labor  belongs  to  the  laborer.  He  has  neither  landlord  nor 
master  to  share  with  him." 

Had  the  great  Scotchman  taken  this  as  the  initial  point 
of  his  reasoning,  and  continued  to  regard  the  produce  of 
labor  as  the  natural  wages  of  labor,  and  the  landlord  and 
master  but  as  sharers,  his  conclusions  would  have  been 
very  different,  and  political  economy  to-day  would  not 
embrace  such  a  mass  of  contradictions  and  absurdities; 
but  instead  of  following  the  truth  obvious  in  the  simple 
modes  of  production  as  a  clew  through  the  perplexities  of 
the  more  complicated  forms,  he  momentarily  recognizes 
it,  only  immediately  to  abandon  it,  and  stating  that  "in 
every  part  of  Europe  twenty  workmen  serve  under  a 
master  for  one  that  is  independent,"  he  recommences  the 
inquiry  from  a  point  of  view  in  which  the  master  is  con- 
sidered as  providing  from  his  capital  the  wages  of  his 
workmen. 

It  is  evident  that  in  thus  placing  the  proportion  of 


Chap.  in.  WAGES  NOT  DRAWS'  FKOM  CAPITAL.  51 

self-employing  workmen  as  but  one  in  twenty,  Adam 
Smith  had  in  mind  but  the  mechanic  arts,  and  that,  in- 
cluding all  laborers,  the  proportion  who  take  their  earn- 
ings directly,  without  the  intervention  of  an  employer, 
must,  even  in  Europe  a  hundred  years  ago,  have  been 
much  greater  than  this.  For,  besides  the  independent 
laborers  who  in  every  community  exist  in  considerable 
numbers,  the  agriculture  of  large  districts  of  Europe 
has,  since  the  time  of  the  Roman  Empire,  been  carried 
on  by  the  metayer  system,  under  which  the  capitalist  re- 
ceives his  return  from  the  laborer  instead  of  the  laborer 
from  the  capitalist.  At  any  rate,  in  the  United  States, 
where  any  general  law  of  wages  must  apply  as  fully  as  in 
Europe,  and  where  in  spite  of  the  advance  of  manufac- 
tures a  very  large  part  of  the  people  are  yet  self-employ- 
ing farmers,  the  proportion  of  laborers  who  get  their 
wages  through  an  employer  must  be  comparatively  small. 
But  it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  the  ratio  in  which  self- 
amploying  laborers  anywhere  stand  to  hired  laborers,  nor 
is  it  necessary  to  multiply  illustrations  of  the  truism  that 
where  the  laborer  takes  directly  his  wages  they  are  the 
product  of  his  labor,  for  as  soon  as  it  is  realized  that  the 
term  wages  includes  all  the  earnings  of  labor,  as  well  when 
taken  directly  by  the  laborer  in  the  results  of  his  labor 
as  when  received  from  an  employer,  it  is  evident  that 
the  assumption  that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital,  on 
which  as  a  universal  truth  such  a  vast  superstructure  is 
in  standard  politico -economic  treatises  so  unhesitatingly 
built,  is  at  least  in  large  part  untrue,  and  the  utmost 
that  can  with  any  plausibility  be  affirmed,  is  that  some 
wages,  i.e.  wages  received  by  the  laborer  from  an  em- 
ployer, are  drawn  from  capital.  This  restriction  of  the 
major  premise  at  once  invalidates  all  the  deductions  that 
are  made  from  it;  but  without  resting  here,  let  us  see 
whether  even  in  this  restricted  sense  it  accords  with  the 
facts,     Liet   us  pick  up  the  clew  where  Adam  Smith 


58  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Poo*  7. 

dropped  it,  and  advancing  step  by  step,  see  whether  the 
relation  of  facts  which  is  obvious  in  the  simplest  forms 
of  production  does  not  run  through  the  most  complex. 

Next  in  simplicity  to  "that  original  state  of  things," 
of  which  many  examples  may  yet  be  found,  where  the 
whole  produce  of  labor  belongs  to  the  laborer,  is  the  ar- 
rangement in  which  the  laborer,  though  working  for 
another  person,  or  with  the  capital  of  another  person, 
receives  his  wages  in  kind — that  is  to  say,  in  the  things 
his  labor  produces.  In  this  case  it  is  as  clear 
as  in  the  case  of  the  self-employing  laborer  that 
the  wages  are  really  drawn  from  the  product  of  the 
labor,  and  not  at  all  from  capital.  If  I  hire  a  man 
to  gather  eggs,  to  pick  berries,  or  to  make  shoes,  paying 
him  from  the  eggs,  the  berries,  or  the  shoes  that  his 
labor  secures,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  source 
of  the  wages  is  the  labor  for  which  they  are  paid.  Of 
this  form  of  hiring  is  the  saer-and-daer  stock  tenancy, 
treated  of  with  such  perspicuity  by  Sir  Henry  Maine  in 
his  "Early  History  of  Institutions,"  and  which  so  clearly 
involved  the  relation  of  employer  and  employed  as  to 
render  the  acceptor  of  cattle  the  man  or  vassal  of  the 
capitalist  who  thus  employed  him.  It  was  on  such  terms 
as  these  that  Jacob  worked  for  Laban,  and  to  this  day, 
even  in  civilized  countries,  it  is  not  an  infrequent  mode 
of  employing  labor.  The  farming  of  land  on  shares, 
which  prevails  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  Southern 
States  of  the  Union  and  in  California,  the  metayer  system 
of  Europe,  as  well  as  the  many  cases  in  which  superin- 
tendents, salesmen,  etc.,  are  paid  by  a  percentage  of  prof- 
its, what  are  they  but  the  employment  of  labor  for  wages 
which  consist  of  part  of  its  produce? 

The  next  step  in  the  advance  from  simplicity  to  com- 
plexity is  where  the  wages,  though  estimated  in  kind, 
are  paid  in  an  equivalent  of  something  else.  For  in- 
stance, on  American  whaling  ships  the  custom  is  not  to 


Chap.  in.  WAGES  NOT  DRAWK   FROM   CAPITAL.  53 

pay  fixed  wages,  but  a  "lay,"  or  proportion  of  the  catch, 
which  varies  from  a  sixteenth  to  a  twelfth  to  the  captain 
down  to  a  three-hundredth  to  the  cabin-boy.  Thus, 
when  a  whaleship  comes  into  New  Bedford  or  San  Fran- 
cisco after  a  successful  cruise,  she  carries  in  her  hold  the 
wages  of  her  crew,  as  well  as  the  profits  of  her  owners, 
and  an  equivalent  which  will  reimburse  them  for  all  the 
stores  used  up  during  the  voyage.  Can  anything  be 
clearer  than  that  these  wages — this  oil  and  bone  which 
the  crew  of  the  whaler  have  taken — have  not  been  drawn 
from  capital,  but  are  really  a  part  of  the  produce  of  their 
labor?  Nor  is  this  fact  changed  or  obscured  in  the 
slightest  degree  where,  as  a  matter  of  convenience,  in- 
stead of  dividing  up  between  the  crew  their  proportion 
of  the  oil  and  bone,  the  value  of  each  man's  share  is  esti- 
mated at  the  market  price,  and  he  is  paid  for  it  in 
money.  The  money  is  but  the  equivalent  of  the  real 
wages,  the  oil  and  bone.  In  no  way  is  there  any  advance 
of  capital  in  this  payment.  The  obligation  to  pay  wages 
does  not  accrue  until  the  value  from  which  they  are  to 
be  paid  is  brought  into  port.  At  the  moment  when  the 
owner  takes  from  his  capital  money  to  pay  the  crew  he 
adds  to  his  capital  oil  and  bone. 

So  far  there  can  be  no  dispute.  Let  us  now  take 
another  step,  which  will  bring  us  to  the  usual  method  of 
employing  labor  and  paying  wages. 

The  Farallone  Islands,  off  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco, 
are  a  hatching  ground  of  sea-fowl,  and  a  company  who 
claim  these  islands  employ  men  in  the  proper  season  to 
collect  the  eggs.  They  might  employ  these  men  for  a 
proportion  of  the  eggs  they  gather,  as  is  done  in  the 
whale  fishery  and  probably  would  do  so  if  there  were 
much  uncertainty  attending  the  business;  but  as  the  fowl 
are  plentiful  and  tame,  and  about  so  many  eggs  can  be 
gathered  by  so  much  labor,  they  find  it  more  convenient 
to  pay  their  men  fixed  wages.    The  men  go  out  and  re- 


64  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  L 

main  on  the  islands,  gathering  the  eggs  and  bringing 
them  to  a  landing,  whence,  at  intervals  of  a  few  days, 
they  are  taken  in  a  small  vessel  to  San  Francisco  and 
sold.  When  the  season  is  over  the  men  return  and  are 
paid  their  stipulated  wages  in  coin.  Does  not  this  trans- 
action amount  to  the  same  thing  as  if,  instead  of  being 
paid  in  coin,  the  stipulated  wages  were  paid  in  an  equiva- 
lent of  the  eggs  gathered?  Does  not  the  coin  represent 
the  eggs,  by  the  sale  of  which  it  was  obtained,  and  are 
not  these  wages  as  much  the  product  of  the  labor  for 
which  they  are  paid  as  the  eggs  would  be  in  the  posses- 
sion of  a  man  who  gathered  them  for  himself  without  the 
intervention  of  any  employer? 

To  take  another  example,  which  shows  by  reversion 
the  identity  of  wages  in  money  with  wages  in  kind.  In 
San  Buenaventura  lives  a  man  who  makes  an  excellent 
living  by  shooting  for  their  oil  and  skins  the  common 
hair  seals  which  frequent  the  islands  forming  the  Santa 
Barbara  Channel.  When  on  these  sealing  expeditions  he 
takes  two  or  three  Chinamen  along  to  help  him,  whom 
at  first  he  paid  wholly  in  coin.  But  it  seems  that  the 
Chinese  highly  value  some  of  the  organs  of  the  seal, 
which  they  dry  and  pulverize  for  medicine,  as  well  as 
the  long  hairs  in  the  whiskers  of  the  male  seal,  which, 
when  over  a  certain  length,  they  greatly  esteem  for 
some  purpose  that  to  outside  barbarians  is  not  very 
clear.  And  this  man  soon  found  that  the  Chinamen 
were  very  willing  to  take  instead  of  money  these  parts  of 
the  seals  killed,  so  that  now,  in  large  part,  he  thus  pays 
them  their  wages. 

Now,  is  not  what  may  be  seen  in  all  these  cases — the 
identity  of  wages  in  money  with  wages  in  kind — true  of 
all  cases  in  which  wages  are  paid  for  productive  labor?  Is 
not  the  fund  created  by  the  labor  really  the  fund  from 
which  the  wages  are  paid? 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  said:  "There  is  thia  differenoe-— 


Chap.  in.  WAGES   KOT  DRAWN   FROM   CAPITAL.  65 

where  a  man  works  for  himself,  or  where,  when  working 
for  an  employer,  he  takes  his  wages  in  kind,  his  wages 
depend  upon  the  result  of  his  labor.  Should  that,  from 
any  misadventure,  prove  futile,  he  gets  nothing.  When 
he  works  for  an  employer,  however,  he  gets  his  wages 
anyhow — they  depend  upon  the  performance  of  the  labor, 
not  upon  the  result  of  the  labor."  But  this  is  evidently 
not  a  real  distinction.  For  on  the  average,  the  labor 
that  is  rendered  for  fixed  wages  not  only  yields  the 
amount  of  the  wages,  but  more;  else  employers  could 
make  no  profit.  When  wages  are  fixed,  the  employer 
takes  the  whole  risk  and  is  compensated  for  this  assur- 
ance, for  wages  when  fixed  are  always  somewhat  less  than 
wages  contingent.  But  though  when  fixed  wages  are 
stipulated  the  laborer  who  has  performed  his  part  of  the 
contract  has  usually  a  legal  claim  upon  the  employer,  it 
is  frequently,  if  not  generally,  the  case  that  the  disaster 
which  prevents  the  employer  from  reaping  benefit  from 
the  labor  prevents  him  from  paying  the  wages.  And  in 
one  important  department  of  industry  the  employer  is 
legally  exempt  in  case  of  disaster,  although  the  contract 
be  for  wages  certain  and  not  contingent.  For  the  maxim 
of  admiralty  law  is,  that  "freight  is  the  mother  of 
wages,"  and  though  the  seaman  may  have  performed  his 
part,  the  disaster  which  prevents  the  ship  from  earning 
freight  deprives  him  of  claim  for  his  wages. 

In  this  legal  maxim  is  embodied  the  truth  for  which  I 
am  contending.  Production  is  always  the  mother  of 
wages.  Without  production,  wages  would  not  and  could 
not  be.  It  is  from  the  produce  of  labor,  not  from  the 
advances  of  capital  that  wages  come. 

Wherever  we  analyze  the  facts  this  will  be  found  to  be 
true.  For  labor  always  precedes  wages.  This  is  as  uni- 
versally true  of  wages  received  by  the  laborer  from  an 
employer  as  it  is  of  wages  taken  directly  by  the  laborer 
who  is  his  own  employer.    In  the  one  class  of  cases  as 


66  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  BoOc  L 

in  the  other,  reward  is  conditioned  upon  exertion.  Paid 
sometimes  by  the  day,  oftener  by  the  week  or  month, 
occasionally  by  the  year,  and  in  many  branches  of  pro- 
duction by  the  piece,  the  payment  of  wages  by  an  em- 
ployer to  an  employee  always  implies  the  previous  ren- 
dering of  labor  by  the  employee  for  the  benefit  of  the 
employer,  for  the  few  cases  in  which  advance  payments 
are  made  for  personal  services  are  evidently  referable 
either  to  charity  or  to  guarantee  and  purchase.  The 
name  "retainer,"  given  to  advance  payments  to  lawyers, 
shows  the  true  character  of  the  transaction,  as  does  the 
name  "blood  money"  given  in  'longshore  vernacular  to  a 
payment  which  is  nominally  wages  advanced  to  sailors, 
but  which  in  reality  is  purchase  money — both  English 
and  American  law  considering  a  sailor  as  much  a  chattel 
as  a  pig. 

I  dwell  on  this  obvious  fact  that  labor  always  precedes 
wages,  because  it  is  all-important  to  an  understanding  of 
the  more  complicated  phenomena  of  wages  that  it  should 
be  kept  in  mind.  And  obvious  as  it  is,  as  I  have  put  it, 
the  plausibility  of  the  proposition  that  wages  are  drawn 
from  capital — a  proposition  that  is  made  the  basis  for 
such  important  and  far-reaching  deductions — comes  in 
the  first  instance  from  a  statement  that  ignores  and  leads 
the  attention  away  from  this  truth.  That  statement  is, 
that  labor  cannot  exert  its  productive  power  unless  sup- 
plied by  capital  with  maintenance.*     The  unwary  reader 

*  Industry  is  limited  by  capital.  .  .  There  can  be  no  more  in- 
dustry than  is  supplied  with  materials  to  work  up  and  food  to  eat. 
Self-evident  as  the  thing  is,  it  is  often  forgotten  that  the  people  of  a 
country  are  maintained  and  have  their  wants  supplied  not  by  the 
produce  of  present  labor,  but  of  past.  They  consume  what  has 
been  produced,  not  what  is  about  to  be  produced.  Now,  of  what 
has  been  produced  a  part  only  is  allotted  to  the  support  of  pro- 
ductive labor,  and  there  will  not  and  cannot  be  more  of  that  labor 


Chap.  in.  WAGES  NOT  DBAWK  FROM  CAPITAL.  6/ 

at  once  recognizes  the  fact  that  the  laborer  must  hafe 
food,  clothing,  etc.,  in  order  to  enable  him  to  perform 
the  work,  and  having  been  told  that  the  food,  clothing, 
etc.,  used  by  productive  laborers  are  capital,  he  assents 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  consumption  of  capital  is  nec- 
essary to  the  application  of  labor,  and  from  this  it  is  but 
an  obvious  deduction  that  industry  is  limited  by  capital 
— that  the  demand  for  labor  depends  upon  the  supply  of 
capital,  and  hence  that  wages  depend  upon  the  ratio  be- 
tween the  number  of  laborers  looking  for  employment 
and  the  amount  of  capital  devoted  to  hiring  them. 

But  I  think  the  discussion  in  the  previous  chapter  will 
enable  any  one  to  see  wherein  lies  the  fallacy  of  this  rea- 
soning— a  fallacy  which  has  entangled  some  of  the  most 
acute  minds  in  a  web  of  their  own  spinning.  It  is  in  the 
use  of  the  term  capital  in  two  senses.  In  the  primary 
proposition  that  capital  is  necessary  to  the  exertion  of 
productive  labor,  the  term  ''capital"  is  understood  as  in- 
cluding all  food,  clothing,  shelter,  etc.;  whereas,  in  the 
deductions  finally  drawn  from  it,  the  term  is  used  in  its 
common  and  legitimate  meaning  of  wealth  devoted,  not 
to  the  immediate  gratification  of  desire,  but  to  the  pro- 
curement of  more  wealth — of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  em- 
ployers as  distinguished  from  laborers.  The  conclusion 
is  no  more  valid  than  it  would  be  from  the  acceptance  of 
the  proposition  that  a  laborer  cannot  go  to  work  without 
his  breakfast  and  some  clothes,  to  infer  that  no  more 
laborers  can  go  to  work  than  employers  first  furnish  with 
breakfasts  and  clothes.  Now,  the  fact  is  that  laborers 
generally  furnish  their  own  breakfasts  and  the  clothes  in 
which  they  go  to  work;  and  the  further  fact  is  that 

than  the  portion  so  allotted  (which  is  the  capital  of  the  country)  can 
feed  and  provide  with  the  materials  and  instruments  of  production. 
— John  Stuart  Mill,  Principlea  of  Political  Economy,  Book  I,  Chap. 
Y,  Bee.  I. 


58  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  T. 

capital  (in  the  sense  in  which  the  word  is  used  in  distinc- 
tion to  labor)  in  exceptional  cases  sometimes  may,  but  is 
never  compelled  to  make  advances  to  labor  before  the 
work  begins.  Of  all  the  vast  number  of  unemployed 
laborers  in  the  civilized  world  to-day,  there  is  probably 
not  a  single  one  willing  to  work  who  could  not  be  em- 
ployed without  any  advance  of  wages.  A  great  propor- 
tion would  doubtless  gladly  go  to  work  on  terms  which 
did  not  require  the  payment  of  wages  before  the  end  of 
a  month;  it  is  doubtful  if  there  are  enough  to  be  called 
a  class  who  would  not  go  to  work  and  wait  for  their 
wages  until  the  end  of  the  week,  as  most  laborers  habit- 
ually do;  while  there  are  certainly  none  who  would  not 
wait  for  their  wages  until  the  end  of  the  day,  or  if  you 
please,  until  the  next  meal  hour.  The  precise  time  of 
the  payment  of  wages  is  immaterial;  the  essential  point 
— the  point  I  lay  stress  on — is  that  it  is  after  the  per- 
formance of  work. 

The  payment  of  wages,  therefore,  always  implies  the 
previous  rendering  of  labor.  Now,  what  does  the  render- 
ing of  labor  in  production  imply?  Evidently  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  which,  if  it  is  to  be  exchanged  or  used  in 
production,  is  capital.  Therefore,  the  payment  of  capi- 
tal in  wages  pre-supposes  a  production  of  capital  by  the 
labor  for  which  the  wages  are  paid.  And  as  the  em- 
ployer generally  makes  a  profit,  the  payment  of  wages  is, 
so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  but  the  return  to  the  laborer 
of  a  portion  of  the  capital  he  has  received  from  the  labor. 
So  far  as  the  employee  is  concerned,  it  is  but  the  receipt 
of  a  portion  of  the  capital  his  labor  has  previously  pro- 
duced. As  the  value  paid  in  the  wages  is  thus  exchanged 
for  a  value  brought  into  being  by  the  labor,  how  can  it 
be  said  that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital  or  advanced  by 
capital?  As  in  the  exchange  of  labor  for  wages  the  em- 
ployer always  gets  the  capital  created  by  the  labor  before 


Chap.ni.  WAGES  XOT  DRATVK  FROM   CAPITAL.  59 

he  pays  out  capital  in  the  wages,  at  what  point  is  his 
capital  lessened  even  temporarily?  * 

Bring  the  question  to  the  test  of  facts.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, an  employing  manufacturer  who  is  engaged  in 
turning  raw  material  into  finished  products — cotton  into 
cloth,  iron  into  hardware,  leather  into  boots,  or  so  on,  as 
may  be,  and  who  pays  his  hands,  as  is  generally  the  case, 
once  a  week.  Make  an  exact  inventory  of  his  capital  on 
Monday  morning  before  the  beginning  of  work,  and  it 
will  consist  of  his  buildings,  machinery,  raw  materials, 
money  on  hand,  and  finished  products  in  stock.  Sup- 
pose, for  the  sake  of  simplicity,  that  he  neither  buys  nor 
sells  during  the  week,  and  after  work  has  stopped  and  he 
has  paid  his  hands  on  Saturday  night,  take  a  new  inven- 
tory of  his  capital.  The  item  of  money  will  be  less,  for 
it  has  been  paid  out  in  wages;  there  will  be  less  raw 
material,  less  coal,  etc.,  and  a  proper  deduction  must  be 
made  from  the  value  of  the  buildings  and  machinery  for 
the  week's  wear  and  tear.  But  if  he  is  doing  a  remuner- 
ative business,  which  must  on  the  average  be  the  case, 
the  item  of  finished  products  will  be  so  much  greater  as 
to  compensate  for  all  these  deficiencies  and  show  in  the 
summing  up  an  increase  of  capital.  Manifestly,  then, 
the  value  he  paid  his  hands  in  wages  was  not  drawn  from 

*  I  speak  of  labor  producing  capital  for  the  sake  of  greater  clearness. 
"What  labor  always  procures  is  either  wealth,  which  may  or  may  not 
be  capital,  or  services,  the  cases  in  which  nothing  is  obtained  being 
merely  exceptional  cases  of  misadventure.  Where  the  object  of  the 
labor  is  simply  the  gratification  of  the  employer,  as  where  I  hire  a 
man  to  black  my  boots,  I  do  not  pay  the  wages  from  capital,  but 
from  wealth  which  I  have  devoted,  not  to  reproductive  uses,  but  to 
consumption  for  my  own  satisfaction.  Even  if  wages  thus  paid  be 
considered  as  drawn  from  capital,  then  by  that  act  they  pass  from 
the  category  of  capital  to  that  of  wealth  devoted  to  the  gratification 
of  the  possessor,  as  when  a  cigar  dealer  takes  a  dozen  cigars  from 
the  stock  he  has  for  sale  and  puts  them  in  his  pocket  for  his  own 
use. 


60  WAGES   AND   CAPITAL.  Book  L 

his  capital,  or  from  any  one  else's  capital.  It  came,  not 
from  capital,  but  from  the  value  created  by  the  labor 
itself.  There  was  no  more  advance  of  capital  than  if  he 
had  hired  his  hands  to  dig  clams,  and  paid  them  with  a 
part  of  the  clams  they  dug.  Their  wages  were  as  truly 
the  produce  of  their  labor  as  were  the  wages  of  the 
primitive  man,  when,  long  "before  the  appropriation  of 
land  and  the  accumulation  of  stock,*'  he  obtained  an 
oyster  by  knocking  it  with  a  stone  from  the  rocks. 

As  the  laborer  who  works  for  an  employer  does  not  get 
his  wages  until  he  has  performed  the  work,  his  case  is 
similar  to  that  of  the  depositor  in  a  bank  who  cannot 
draw  money  out  until  he  has  put  money  in.  And  as  by 
drawing  out  what  he  has  previously  put  in,  the  bank  de- 
positor does  not  lessen  the  capital  of  the  bank,  neither 
can  laborers  by  receiving  wages  lessen  even  temporarily 
either  the  capital  of  the  employer  or  the  aggregate  capi- 
tal of  the  community.  Their  wages  no  more  come  from 
capital  than  the  checks  of  depositors  are  drawn  against 
bank  capital.  It  is  true  that  laborers  in  receiving  wages 
do  not  generally  receive  back  wealth  in  the  same  form  in 
which  they  have  rendered  it,  any  more  than  bank  deposi- 
tors receive  back  the  identical  coins  or  bank  notes  they 
have  deposited,  but  they  receive  it  in  equivalent  form, 
and  as  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  the  depositor  re- 
ceives from  the  bank  the  money  he  paid  in,  so  are  we 
justified  in  saying  that  the  laborer  receives  in  wages  the 
wealth  he  has  rendered  in  labor. 

That  this  universal  truth  is  so  often  obscured,  is 
largely  due  to  that  fruitful  source  of  economic  obscuri- 
ties, the  confounding  of  wealth  with  money;  and  it  is  re- 
markable to  see  so  many  of  those  who,  since  Dr.  Adam 
Smith  made  the  egg  stand  on  its  head,  have  copiously 
demonstrated  the  fallacies  of  the  mercantile  system,  fall 
into  delusions  of  the  very  same  kind  in  treating  of  the 
relations  of  capital  and  labor.     Money  being  the  general 


Chap.m.  WAGES  NOT  DRAWK  FROM  CAPITAL.  61 

medium  of  exchanges,  the  common  flux  through  which 
all  transmutations  of  wealth  from  one  form  to  another 
take  place,  whatever  difficulties  may  exist  to  an  exchange 
will  generally  show  themselves  on  the  side  of  reduction 
to  money,  and  thus  it  is  sometimes  easier  to  exchange 
money  for  any  other  form  of  wealth  than  it  is  to  ex- 
change wealth  in  a  particular  form  into  money,  for  the 
reason  that  there  are  more  holders  of  wealth  who  desire 
to  make  some  exchange  than  there  are  who  desire  to 
make  any  particular  exchange.  And  so  a  producing  em- 
ployer who  has  paid  out  his  money  in  wages  may  some- 
times find  it  difiicult  to  turn  quickly  back  into  money 
the  increased  value  for  which  his  money  has  really  been 
exchanged,  and  is  spoken  of  as  having  exhausted  or  ad- 
vanced his  capital  in  the  payment  of  wages.  Yet,  unless 
the  new  value  created  by  the  labor  is  less  than  the  wages 
paid,  which  can  be  only  an  exceptional  case,  the  capital 
which  he  had  before  in  money  he  now  has  in  goods — it 
has  been  changed  in  form,  but  not  lessened. 

There  is  one  branch  of  production  in  regard  to  which 
the  confusions  of  thought  which  arise  from  the  habit  of 
estimating  capital  in  money  are  least  likely  to  occur,  in- 
asmuch as  its  product  is  the  general  material  and  stand- 
ard of  money.  And  it  so  happens  that  this  business  fur- 
nishes us,  almost  side  by  side,  with  illustrations  of  pro- 
duction passing  from  the  simplest  to  most  complex 
forms. 

In  the  early  days  of  California,  as  afterward  in  Aus- 
tralia, the  placer  miner,  who  found  in  river  bed  or  sur- 
face deposit  the  glittering  particles  which  the  slow  proc- 
esses of  nature  had  for  ages  been  accumulating,  picked 
up  or  washed  out  his  ''wages**  (so,  too,  h«  called  them) 
in  actual  money,  for  coin  being  scarce,  gold  dust  passed 
as  currency  by  weight,  and  at  the  end  of  the  day  had  his 
wages  in  money  in  a  buckskin  bag  in  his  pocket.  There 
can  be  no  dispute  as  to  whether  these  wages  came  from 


62  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Booh  I. 

capital  or  not.  They  were  manifestly  the  produce  of  his 
labor.  Nor  could  there  be  any  dispute  when  the  holder 
of  a  specially  rich  claim  hired  men  to  work  for  him  and 
paid  them  off  in  the  identical  money  which  their  labor 
had  taken  from  gulch  or  bar.  As  coin  became  more 
abundant,  its  greater  convenience  in  saving  the  trouble 
and  loss  of  weighing  assigned  gold  dust  to  the  place  of  a 
commodity,  and  with  coin  obtained  by  the  sale  of  the 
dust  their  labor  had  procured,  the  employing  miner  paid 
off  his  hands.  Where  he  had  coin  enough  to  do  so,  in- 
stead of  selling  his  gold  dust  at  the  nearest  store  and 
paying  a  dealer's  profit,  he  retained  it  until  he  got 
eneugh  to  take  a  trip,  or  send  by  express  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  at  the  mint  he  could  have  it  turned  into 
coin  without  charge.  While  thus  accumulating  gold 
dust  he  was  lessening  his  stock  of  coin;  just  as  the  man- 
ufacturer, while  accumulating  a  stock  of  goods,  lessens 
his  stock  of  money.  Yet  no  one  would  be  obtuse  enough 
to  imagine  that  in  thus  taking  in  gold  dust  and  paying 
out  coin  the  miner  was  lessening  his  capital. 

But  the  deposits  that  could  be  worked  without  pre- 
liminary labor  were  soon  exhausted,  and  gold  mining 
rapidly  took  a  more  elaborate  character.  Before  claims 
could  be  opened  so  as  to  yield  any  return  deep  shafts  had 
to  be  sunk,  great  dams  constructed,  long  tunnels  cut 
through  the  hardest  rock,  water  brought  for  miles  over 
mountain  ridges  and  across  deep  valleys,  and  expensive 
machinery  put  up.  These  works  could  not  be  con- 
structed without  capital.  Sometimes  their  construction 
required  years,  during  which  no  return  could  be  hoped 
for,  while  the  men  employed  had  to  be  paid  their  wages 
every  week,  or  every  month.  Surely,  it  will  be  said,  in  such 
cases,  even  if  in  no  others,  that  wages  do  actually  come 
from  capital;  are  actually  advanced  by  capital;  and  must 
necessarily  lessen  capital  in  their  payment!    Surely  here. 


Chap.ni.  WAGES  KOT  DRAWN"  FEOM  CAPITAL.  63 

at  least,  industry  is  limited  by  capital,  for  without  capi- 
tal such  works  could  not  be  carried  on!    Let  us  see: 

It  is  cases  of  this  class  that  are  always  instanced  as 
showing  that  wages  are  advanced  from  capital.  For 
where  wages  are  paid  before  the  object  of  the  labor  is  ob- 
tained, or  is  finished — as  in  agriculture,  where  plowing 
and  sowing  must  precede  by  several  months  the  harvest- 
ing of  the  crop;  as  in  the  erection  of  buildings,  the  con- 
struction of  ships,  railroads,  canals,  etc. — it  is  clear  that 
the  owners  of  the  capital  paid  in  wages  cannot  expect  an 
immediate  return,  but,  as  the  phrase  is,  must  "outlay 
it,"  or  **lie  out  of  it"  for  a  time,  which  sometimes 
amounts  to  many  years.  And  hence,  if  first  principles 
are  not  kept  in  mind,  it  is  easy  to  jump  to  the  conclusion 
that  wages  are  advanced  by  capital. 

But  such  cases  will  not  embarrass  the  reader  to  whom 
in  what  has  preceded  I  have  made  myself  clearly  under- 
stood. An  easy  analysis  wiK  show  that  these  instances 
where  wages  are  paid  before  the  product  is  finished,  or 
even  produced,  do  not  afford  any  exception  to  the  rule 
apparent  where  the  product  is  finished  before  wages  are 
paid. 

If  I  go  to  a  broker  to  exchange  silver  for  gold,  I  lay 
down  my  silver,  which  he  counts  and  puts  away,  and 
then  hands  me  the  equivalent  in  gold,  minus  his  com- 
mission. Does  the  broker  advance  me  any  capital? 
Manifestly  not.  What  he  had  before  in  gold  he  now  has 
in  silver,  plus  his  profit.  And  as  he  got  the  silver  before 
he  paid  out  the  gold,  there  is  on  his  part  not  even  mo- 
mentarily an  advance  of  capital. 

Now,  this  operation  of  the  broker  is  precisely  analo- 
gous to  what  the  capitalist  does,  when,  in  such  cases  as  we 
are  now  considering,  he  pays  out  capital  in  wages.  As 
the  rendering  of  labor  precedes  the  payment  of  wages, 
and  as  the  rendering  of  labor  in  production  implies  the 


64  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Boole  t 

creation  of  value,  the  employer  receives  value  before  he 
pays  out  value — he  but  exchanges  capital  of  one  form  for 
capital  of  another  form.  For  the  creation  of  value  does 
not  depend  upon  the  finishing  of  the  product;  it  takes 
place  at  every  stage  of  the  process  of  production,  as  the 
immediate  result  of  the  application  of  labor,  and  hence, 
no  matter  how  long  the  process  in  which  it  is  engaged, 
labor  always  adds  to  capital  by  its  exertion  before  it  takes 
from  capital  in  its  wages. 

Here  is  a  blacksmith  at  his  forge  making  picks. 
Clearly  he  is  making  capital — adding  picks  to  his  em- 
ployer's capital  before  he  draws  money  from  it  in  wages. 
Here  is  a  machinist  or  boilermaker  working  on  the  keel- 
plates  of  a  Great  Eastern.  Is  not  he  also  just  as  clearly 
creating  value — making  capital?  The  giant  steamship, 
as  the  pick,  is  an  article  of  wealth,  an  instrument  of  pro- 
duction, and  though  the  one  may  not  be  completed  for 
years,  while  the  other  is  completed  in  a  few  minutes, 
each  day's  work,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  is  as 
clearly  a  production  of  wealth — an  addition  to  capital. 
In  the  case  of  the  steamship,  as  in  the  case  of  the  pick,  it 
is  not  the  last  blow,  any  more  than  the  first  blow,  that 
creates  the  value  of  the  finished  product — the  creation 
of  value  is  continuous,  it  immediately  results  from  the 
exertion  of  labor. 

We  see  this  very  clearly  wherever  the  division  of  labor 
has  made  it  customary  for  different  parts  of  the  full 
process  of  production  to  be  carried  on  by  different  sets 
of  producers — that  is  to  say,  wherever  we  are  in  the  habit 
of  estimating  the  amount  of  value  which  the  labor  ex- 
pended in  any  preparatory  stage  of  production  has 
created.  And  a  moment's  reflection  will  show  that  this 
is  the  case  as  to  the  vast  majority  of  products.  Take  a 
ship,  a  building,  a  jack-knife,  a  book,  a  lady's  thimble  or 
a  loaf  of  bread.  They  are  finished  products.  But  they 
were  not  produced  at  one  operation  or  by  one  set  of  pro- 


Chap.m.  WAGES  NOT  DEAWN  FROM  CAPITAL.  65 

ducers.  And  this  being  the  case,  we  readily  distinguish 
different  points  or  stages  in  the  creation  of  the  value 
which  as  completed  articles  they  represent.  When  we 
do  not  distinguish  different  parts  in  the  final  process  of 
production  we  do  distinguish  the  value  of  the  materials. 
The  value  of  these  materials  may  often  be  again  decom- 
posed many  times,  exhibiting  as  many  clearly  defined 
steps  in  the  creation  of  the  final  value.  At  each  of  these 
steps  we  habitually  estimate  a  creation  of  value,  an  ad- 
dition to  capital.  The  batch  of  bread  which  the  baker  is 
taking  from  the  oven  has  a  certain  value.  But  this  is 
composed  in  part  of  the  value  of  the  flour  from  which  the 
dough  was  made.  And  this  again  is  composed  of  the 
value  of  the  wheat,  the  value  given  by  milling,  etc. 
Iroti  in  the  form  of  pigs  is  very  far  from  being  a  com- 
pleted product.  It  must  yet  pass  through  several,  or, 
perhaps,  through  many,  stages  of  production  before  it 
results  in  the  finished  articles  that  were  the  ultimato  ob- 
jects for  which  the  iron  ore  was  extracted  from  the  mine. 
Yet,  is  not  pig  iron  capital?  And  so  the  process  of  pro- 
duction is  not  really  completed  when  a  crop  of  cotton  is 
gathered,  nor  yet  when  it  is  ginned  and  pressed;  nor  yet 
when  it  arrives  at  Lowell  or  Manchester;  nor  yet  when  it 
is  converted  into  yarn;  nor  yet  when  it  becomes  cloth; 
but  only  when  it  is  finally  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
consumer.  Yet  at  each  step  in  this  progress  there  is 
clearly  enough  a  creation  of  value — an  addition  to  capital. 
Why,  therefore,  although  we  do  not  so  habitually  dis- 
tinguish and  estimate  it,  is  there  not  a  creation  of  value 
— an  addition  to  capital — when  the  ground  is  plowed  for 
the  crop?  Is  it  because  it  may  possibly  be  a  bad  season 
and  the  crop  may  fail?  Evidently  not;  for  a  like  possi- 
bility of  misadventure  attends  every  one  of  the  many 
steps  in  the  production  of  the  finished  article.  On  the 
average  a  crop  is  sure  to  come  up,  and  so  much  plowing 
and  sowing  will  on  the  average  result  in  so  much  cotton 


66  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I 

in  the  boll,  as  surely  as  so  much  spinning  of  cotton  yarn 
will  result  in  so  much  cloth. 

In  short,  as  the  payment  of  wages  is  always  condi- 
tioned upon  the  rendering  of  labor,  the  payment  of 
wages  in  production,  no  matter  how  long  the  process, 
never  involves  any  advance  of  capital,  or  even  tempo- 
rarily lessens  capital.  It  may  take  a  year,  or  even  years, 
to  build  a  ship,  but  the  creation  of  value  of  which  the 
finished  ship  will  be  the  sum  goes  on  day  by  day,  and 
hour  by  hour,  from  the  time  the  keel  is  laid  or  even  the 
ground  is  cleared.  Nor  by  the  payment  of  wages  before 
the  ship  is  completed,  does  the  master  builder  lessen 
either  his  capital  or  the  capital  of  the  community,  for 
the  value  of  the  partially  completed  ship  stands  in  place 
of  the  value  paid  out  in  wages.  There  is  no  advance  of 
capital  in  this  payment  of  wages,  for  the  labor  of  the 
workmen  during  the  week  or  month  creates  and  renders 
to  the  builder  more  capital  than  is  paid  back  to  them  at 
the  end  of  the  week  or  month,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  if  the  builder  were  at  any  stage  of  the  construction 
asked  to  sell  a  partially  completed  ship  he  would  expect 
a  profit. 

And  so,  when  a  Sutro  or  St.  Gothard  tunnel  or  a 
Suez  canal  is  cut,  there  is  no  advance  of  capital.  The 
tunnel  or  canal,  as  it  is  cut,  becomes  capital  as  much  as 
the  money  spent  in  cutting  it — or,  if  you  please,  the 
powder,  drills,  etc.,  used  in  the  work,  and  the  food, 
clothes,  etc.,  used  by  the  workmen — as  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  the  value  of  the  capital  stock  of  the  company  is 
not  lessened  as  capital  in  these  forms  is  gradually 
changed  into  capital  in  the  form  of  tunnel  or  canal.  On 
the  contrary,  it  probably,  and  on  the  average,  increases 
as  the  work  progresses,  just  as  the  capital  invested  in  a 
speedier  mode  of  production  would  on  the  average 
increase. 

And  this  is  obvious  in  agriculture  also.     That  the 


Chap.  in.         WAGES  NOT  DEAWN  FROM  CAPITAL.  67 

creation  of  value  does  not  take  place  all  at  once  when 
the  crop  is  gathered,  but  step  by  step  during  the  whole 
process  which  the  gathering  of  the  crop  concludes,  and 
that  no  payment  of  wages  in  the  interim  lessens  the 
farmer's  capital,  is  tangible  enough  when  land  is  sold  or 
rented  during  the  process  of  production,  as  a  plowed  field 
will  bring  more  than  an  unplowed  field,  or  a  field  that 
has  been  sown  more  than  one  merely  plowed.  It  is 
tangible  enough  when  growing  crops  are  sold,  as  is  some- 
times done,  or  where  the  farmer  does  not  harvest  him- 
self, but  lets  a  contract  to  the  owner  of  harvesting  ma- 
chinery. It  is  tangible  in  the  case  of  orchards  and  vine- 
yards which,  though  not  yet  in  bearing,  bring  prices 
proportionate  to  their  age.  It  is  tangible  in  the  case  of 
horses,  cattle  and  sheep,  which  increase  in  value  as  they 
grow  toward  maturity.  And  if  not  always  tangible  be- 
tween what  may  be  called  the  usual  exchange  points  in 
production,  this  increase  of  value  as  surely  takes  place 
with  every  exertion  of  labor.  Hence,  where  labor  is 
rendered  before  wages  are  paid,  the  advance  of  capital  is 
really  made  by  labor,  and  is  from  the  employed  to  the 
employer,  not  from  the  employer  to  the  employed. 

"Yet,"  it  may  be  said,  "in  such  cases  as  we  have  been 
considering  capital  is  required!"  Certainly;  I  do  not 
dispute  that.  But  it  is  not  required  in  order  to  make 
advances  to  labor.  It  is  required  for  quite  another  pur- 
pose.    What  that  purpose  is  we  may  readily  see. 

When  wages  are  paid  in  kind — that  is  to  say,  in  wealth 
of  the  same  species  as  the  labor  produces;  as,  for  in- 
stance, if  I  hire  men  to  cut  wood,  agreeing  to  give  them 
as  wages  a  portion  of  the  wood  they  cut,  a  method  some- 
times adopted  by  the  owners  or  lessees  of  woodland,  it 
is  evident  that  no  capital  is  required  for  the  payment  of 
wages.  Nor  yet  when,  for  the  sake  of  mutual  conven- 
ience, arising  from  the  fact  that  a  largequantity  of  wood 
can  be  more  readily  and  more  advantageously  exchanged 


68  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I 

than  a  number  of  small  quantities,  I  agree  to  pay  wages 
in  money,  instead  of  wood,  shall  I  need  any  capital, 
provided  I  can  make  the  exchange  of  the  wood  for  money 
before  the  wages  are  due.  It  is  only  when  I  cannot 
make  such  an  exchange,  or  such  an  advantageous  ex- 
change as  I  desire,  until  I  accumulate  a  large  quantity 
of  wood  that  I  shall  need  capital.  Nor  even  then  shall 
I  need  capital  if  I  can  make  a  partial  or  tentative  ex- 
change by  borrowing  on  my  wood.  If  I  cannot,  or  do 
not  choose,  either  to  sell  the  wood  or  to  borrow  upon  it, 
and  yet  wish  to  go  ahead  accumulating  a  large  stock  of 
wood,  I  shall  need  capital.  But  manifestly,  I  need  this 
capital,  not  for  the  payment  of  wages,  but  for  the  accu- 
mulation of  a  stock  of  wood.  Likewise  in  cutting  a 
tunnel.  If  the  workmen  were  paid  in  tunnel  (which,  if 
convenient,  might  easily  be  done  by  paying  them  in  stock 
of  the  company),  no  capital  for  the  payment  of  wages 
would  be  required.  It  is  only  when  the  undertakers 
wish  to  accumulate  capital  in  the  shape  of  a  tunnel  that 
they  will  need  capital.  To  recur  to  our  first  illustration: 
The  broker  to  whom  I  sell  my  silver  cannot  carry  on 
his  business  without  capital.  But  he  does  not  need  this 
capital  because  he  makes  any  advance  of  capital  to 
me  when  he  receives  my  silver  and  hands  me  gold.  He 
needs  it  because  the  nature  of  the  business  requires  the 
keeping  of  a  certain  amount  of  capital  on  hand,  in  order 
that  when  a  customer  comes  he  may  be  prepared  to  make 
the  exchange  the  customer  desires. 

And  so  we  shall  find  it  in  every  branch  of  production. 
Capital  has  never  to  be  set  aside  for  the  payment  of 
wages  when  the  produce  of  the  labor  for  which  the  wages 
are  paid  is  exchanged  as  soon  as  produced;  it  is  only 
required  when  this  produce  is  stored  up,  or  what  is  to 
the  individual  the  same  thing,  placed  in  the  general  cur- 
rent of  exchanges  without  being  at  once  drawn  against— 
^hat  is,  sold  on  credit.     But  the  capital  thus  required  is 


Chap.ni.  WAGES  NOT  DRAWN  FKOM  CAPITAL.  69 

not  required  for  the  payment  of  wages,  nor  for  advances 
to  labor,  as  it  is  always  represented  in  the  produce  of  the 
labor.  It  is  never  as  an  employer  of  labor  that  any  pro- 
ducer needs  capital;  when  he  does  need  capital,  it  is  be- 
cause he  is  not  only  an  employer  of  labor,  but  a  merchant 
or  speculator  in,  or  an  accumulator  of,  the  products  of 
labor.     This  is  generally  the  case  with  employers. 

To  recapitulate:  The  man  who  works  for  himself  gets 
his  wages  in  the  things  he  produces,  as  he  produces  them, 
and  exchanges  this  value  into  another  form  whenever 
he  sells  the  produce.  The  man  who  works  for  another 
for  stipulated  wages  in  money  works  under  a  contract  of 
exchange.  He  also  creates  his  wages  as  he  renders  his 
labor,  but  he  does  not  get  them  except  at  stated  times, 
in  stated  amounts,  and  in  a  different  form.  In  perform- 
ing the  labor  he  is  advancing  in  exchange;  when  he  gets 
his  wages  the  exchange  is  completed.  During  the  time 
he  is  earning  the  wages  he  is  advancing  capital  to  his 
employer,  but  at  no  time,  unless  wages  are  paid  before 
work  is  done,  is  the  employer  advancing  capital  to  him. 
Whether  the  employer  who  receives  this  produce  in  ex- 
change for  the  wages  immediately  re-exchanges  it,  or 
keeps  it  for  awhile,  no  more  alters  the  character  of  the 
transaction  than  does  the  final  disposition  of  the  product 
made  by  the  ultimate  receiver,  who  may,  perhaps,  be  in 
another  quarter  of  the  globe  and  at  the  end  of  a  series  of 
exchanges  numbering  hundreds. 


CHAPTER  IVc 

THE     MAINTENANCE    OF     LABORERS     NOT     DRAWN     FROM 
CAPITAL. 

But  a  stumbling  block  may  yet  remain,  or  may  recur, 
in  the  mind  of  the  reader. 

As  the  plowman  cannot  eat  the  furrow,  nor  a  partially 
completed  steam  engine  aid  in  any  way  in  producing  the 
clothes  the  machinist  wears,  have  I  not,  in  the  words  of 
John  Stuart  Mill,  "forgotten  that  the  people  of  a  coun- 
try are  maintained  and  have  their  wants  supplied,  not 
by  the  produce  of  present  labor,  but  of  past?"  Or,  to 
use  the  language  of  a  popular  elementary  work — that  of 
Mrs.  Fawcett  —  have  I  not  "forgotten  that  many 
months  must  elapse  between  the  sowing  of  the  seed  and 
the  time  when  the  produce  of  that  seed  is  converted  into 
a  loaf  of  bread,"  and  that  "it  is,  therefore,  evident  that 
laborers  cannot  live  upon  that  which  their  labor  is  assist- 
ing to  produce,  but  are  maintained  by  that  wealth  which 
their  labor,  or  the  labor  of  others,  has  previously  pro- 
duced, which  wealth  is  capital?"  * 

The  assumption  made  in  these  passages — the  assumption 
that  it  is  so  self-evident  that  labor  must  be  subsisted  from 
capital  that  the  proposition  has  but  to  be  stated  to  com- 
pel recognition — runs  through  the  whole  fabric  of  cur. 
rent  political  economy.  And  so  confidently  is  it  held 
that  the  maintenance  of  labor  is  drawn  from  capital  that 

*  Political  Economy  for  Beginners,  by  Millicent  Garrett  Fawcett, 
Chap.  Ill,  p.  25. 


Chap.rr.     LABORERS  NOT  MAINTAINED  BY  CAPITAL.  71 

the  proposition  that  "population  regulates  itself  by  the 
funds  which  are  to  employ  it,  and,  therefore,  always  in- 
creases or  diminishes  with  the  increase  or  diminution  of 
capital,"  *  is  regarded  as  equally  axiomatic,  and  in  its 
turn  made  the  basis  of  important  reasoning. 

Yet  being  resolved,  these  propositions  are  seen  to  be, 
not  self-evident,  but  absurd;  for  they  involve  the  idea 
that  labor  cannot  be  exerted  until  the  products  of  labor 
are  saved — thus  putting  the  product  before  the  producer. 

And  being  examined,  they  will  be  seen  to  derive  their 
apparent  plausibility  from  a  confusion  of  thought. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  the  fallacy,  concealed  by  an 
erroneous  definition,  which  underlies  the  proposition 
that  because  food,  raiment  and  shelter  are  necessary  to 
productive  labor,  therefore  industry  is  limited  by  capital. 
To  say  that  a  man  must  have  his  breakfast  before  going 
to  work  is  not  to  say  that  he  cannot  go  to  work  unless  a 
capitalist  furnishes  him  with  a  breakfast,  for  his  break- 
fast may,  and  in  point  of  fact  in  any  country  where  there 
is  not  actual  famine  will,  come  not  from  wealth  set  apart 
for  the  assistance  of  production,  but  from  wealth  set 
apart  for  subsistence.  And,  as  has  been  previously  shown, 
food,  clothing,  etc. — in  short,  all  articles  of  wealth — are 
only  capital  so  long  as  they  remain  in  the  possession  of 
those  who  propose,  not  to  consume,  *but  to  exchange 
them  for  other  commodities  or  for  productive  services, 
and  cease  to  be  capital  when  they  pass  into  the  posses- 
sion of  those  who  will  consume  them;  for  in  that  trans- 
action they  pass  from  the  stock  of  wealth  held  for  the 
purpose  of  procuring  other  wealth,  and  pass  into  the 
stock  of  wealth  held  for  purposes  of  gratification,  irre- 
spective of  whether  their  consumption  will  aid  in  the 
production  of  wealth  or  not.  Unless  this  distinction  is 
preserved  it  is  impossible  to  draw  the  line  between  the 

*  The  words  quoted  are  Ricardo's  (Chap.  II);  but  the  idea  is  com- 
mon iu  standard  works. 


72  WAGES   AND   CAPITAL.  Book  1. 

wealth  that  is  capital  and  the  wealth  that  is  not  capital, 
even  by  remitting  the  distinction  to  the  "mind  of  the 
possessor,"  as  does  John  Stuart  Mill.  For  men  do  not 
eat  or  abstain,  wear  clothes  or  go  naked,  as  they  propose 
to  engage  in  productive  labor  or  not.  They  eat  because 
they  are  hungry,  and  wear  clothes  because  they  would  be 
uncomfortable  without  them.  Take  the  food  on  the 
breakfast  table  of  a  laborer  who  will  work  or  not  that  day 
as  he  gets  the  opportunity.  If  the  distinction  between 
capital  and  non-capital  be  the  support  of  productive 
labor,  is  this  food  capital  or  not?  It  is  as  impossible  for 
the  laborer  himself  as  for  any  philosopher  of  the  Eicardo- 
Mill  school  to  tell.  Nor  yet  can  it  be  told  when  it  gets 
into  his  stomach;  nor,  supposing  that  he  does  not  get 
work  at  first,  but  continues  the  search,  can  it  be  told 
until  it  has  passed  into  the  blood  and  tissues.  Yet  the 
man  will  eat  his  breakfast  all  the  same. 

But,  though  it  would  be  logically  suflScient,  it  is  hardly 
safe  to  rest  here  and  leave  the  argument  to  turn  on  the 
distinction  between  wealth  and  capital.  Nor  is  it  neces- 
sary. It  seems  to  me  that  the  proposition  that  present 
labor  must  be  maintained  by  the  produce  of  past  labor 
will  upon  analysis  prove  to  be  true  only  in  the  sense  that 
the  afternoon's  labor  must  be  performed  by  the  aid  of 
the  noonday  meal,  or  that  before  you  eat  the  hare  he 
must  be  caught  and  cooked.  And  this,  manifestly,  is 
not  the  sense  in  which  the  proposition  is  used  to  support 
the  important  reasoning  that  is  made  to  hinge  upon  it. 
That  sense  is,  that  before  a  work  which  will  not  immedi- 
ately result  in  wealth  available  for  subsistence  can  be 
carried  on,  there  must  exist  such  a  stock  of  subsistence 
as  will  support  the  laborers  during  the  process.  Let  us 
see  if  this  be  true: 

The  canoe  which  Eobinson  Crusoe  made  with  such  in- 
finite toil  and  pains  was  a  production  in  which  his  labor 
could  not  yield  an  immediate  return.     Bat  was  it  neces- 


Chap.JV.      LABOREBS  NOT  MAINTAINED   BY   CAPITAL.  73 

sary  that,  before  he  commenced,  he  should  accumulate  a 
stock  of  food  sufficient  to  maintain  him  while  he  felled 
the  tree,  hewed  out  the  canoe,  and  finally  launched  her 
into  the  sea?  Not  at  all.  It  was  necessary  only  that  he 
should  dev.ote  part  of  his  time  to  the  procurement  of 
food  while  he  was  devoting  part  of  his  time  to  the  build- 
ing and  launching  of  the  canoe.  Or  supposing  a  hun- 
dred men  to  be  landed,  without  any  stock  of  provisions, 
in  a  new  country.  Will  it  be  necessary  for  them  to  ac- 
cumulate a  season's  stock  of  provisions  before  they  can 
begin  to  cultivate  the  soil?  Not  at  all.  It  will  be  neces- 
sary only  that  fish,  game,  berries,  etc.,  shall  be  so  abun- 
dant that  the  labor  of  a  part  of  the  hundred  may  suffice 
to  furnish  daily  enough  of  these  for  the  maintenance  of 
all,  and  that  there  shall  be  such  a  sense  of  mutual 
interest,  or  such  a  correlation  of  desires,  as  shall  lead 
those  who  in  the  present  get  the  food  to  divide  (ex- 
change) with  those  whose  efforts  are  4iyected  tp,  .future 
recompense.  ,  slri -i^ib  .y,,- 

What  is  true  in  these  cases  is  true  in  all  cases.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  the  production  of  things  that  cannot  be 
used  as  subsistence,  or  cannot  be  immediately  utilized, 
that  there  should  have  been  a  previous  production  of  the 
wealth  required  for  the  maintenance  of  the  laborers 
while  the  production  is  going  on.  It  is  only  necessary 
that  there  should  be,  somewhere  within  the  circle  of  ex- 
change, a  contemporaneous  production  or  sufficient  sub- 
sistence for  the  laborers,  and  a  willingness  to  exchange 
this  subsistence  for  the  thing  on  which  the  labor  is  being 
bestowed. 

And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  it  not  true,  in  any  normal 
condition  of  things,  that  consumption  is  aupported  by 
contemporaneous  production?  n  frf  .,a,i 

Here  is  a  luxurious  idler,  who  does  no  productive  work 
either  with  head  or  hand,  but  lives,  we  say,  upon  wealth 
which  his  father  left  him  securely  invested  in  govern- 


74  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  BtxJcl. 

ment  bonds.  Does  his  subsistence,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
come  from  wealth  accumulated  in  the  past  or  from  the 
productive  labor  that  is  going  on  around  him?  On  his 
table  are  new-laid  eggs,  butter  churned  but  a  few  days 
before,  milk  which  the  cow  gave  this  morning,  fish  which 
twenty-four  hours  ago  were  swimming  in  the  sea,  meat 
which  the  butcher  boy  has  just  brought  in  time  to  be 
cooked,  vegetables  fresh  from  the  garden,  and  fruit  from 
the  orchard — in  short,  hardly  anything  that  has  not  re- 
cently left  the  hand  of  the  productive  laborer  (for  in  this 
category  must  be  included  transporters  and  distributors 
as  well  as  those  who  are  engaged  in  the  first  stages  of 
production),  and  nothing  that  has  been  produced  for  any 
considerable  length  of  time,  unless  it  maybe  some  bottles 
of  old  wine.  What  this  man  inherited  from  his  father, 
and  on  which  we  say  he  lives,  is  not  actually  wealth  at 
all,  but  only  the  power  of  commanding  wealth  as  others 
produce  it.  And  it  is  from  this  contemporaneous  pro- 
duction that  his  subsistence  is  drawn. 

The  fifty  square  miles  of  London  undoubtedly  contain 
more  wealth  than  within  the  same  space  anywhere  else 
exists.  Yet  were  productive  labor  in  London  absolutely 
to  cease,  within  a  few  hours  people  would  begin  to 
die  like  rotten  sheep,  and  within  a  few  weeks,  or  at  most 
a  few  months,  hardly  one  would  be  left  alive.  For  an 
entire  suspension  of  productive  labor  would  be  a  disaster 
more  dreadful  than  ever  yet  befell  a  beleaguered  city.  It 
would  not  be  a  mere  external  wall  of  circumvallation, 
such  as  Titus  drew  around  Jerusalem,  which  would  pre- 
vent the  constant  incoming  of  the  supplies  on  which  a 
great  city  lives,  but  it  would  be  the  drawing  of  a  similar 
wall  around  each  household.  Imagine  such  a  suspension 
of  labor  in  any  community,  and  you  will  see  how  true  it 
is  that  mankind  really  live  from  hand  to  mouth;  that  it 
is  the  daily  labor  of  the  community  that  supplies  the 
community  with  its  daily  bread. 


Chap.  IV.      LABORERS   NOT  MAINTAINED   BY   CAPITAL.  75 

Just  as  the  subsistence  of  the  laborers  who  built  the 
Pyramids  was  drawn  not  from  a  previously  hoarded 
stock,  but  from  the  constantly  recurring  crops  of  the  Nile 
Valley;  just  as  a  modern  government  when  it  undertakes 
a  great  work  of  years  does  not  appropriate  to  it  wealth 
already  produced,  but  wealth  yet  to  be  produced,  which 
is  taken  from  producers  in  taxes  as  the  work  progresses; 
so  it  is  that  the  subsistence  of  the  laborers  engaged  in 
production  which  does  not  directly  yield  subsistence 
comes  from  the  production  of  subsistence  in  which  others 
are  simultaneously  engaged. 

If  we  trace  the  circle  of  exchange  by  which  work  done 
in  the  production  of  a  great  steam  engine  secures  to  the 
worker  bread,  meat,  clothes  and  shelter,  we  shall  find 
that  though  between  the  laborer  on  the  engine  and  the 
producers  of  the  bread,  meat,  etc.,  there  may  be  a  thou- 
sand intermediate  exchanges,  the  transaction,  when  re- 
duced to  its  lowest  terms,  really  amounts  to  an  exchange 
of  labor  between  him  and  them.  Now  the  cause  which 
induces  the  expenditure  of  the  labor  on  the  engine  is 
evidently  that  some  one  who  has  power  to  give  what  is 
desired  by  the  laborer  on  the  engine  wants  in  exchange 
an  engine — that  is  to  say,  there  exists  a  demand  for  an 
engine  on  the  part  of  those  producing  bread,  meat,  etc., 
or  on  the  part  of  those  who  are  producing  what  the  pro- 
ducers of  the  bread,  meat,  etc.,  desire.  It  is  this  demand 
which  directs  the  labor  of  the  machinist  to  the  produc- 
tion of  the  engine,  and  hence,  reversely,  the  demand  of 
the  machinist  for  bread,  meat,  etc.,  really  directs  an 
equivalent  amount  of  labor  to  the  production  of  these 
things,  and  thus  his  labor,  actually  exerted  in  the  pro- 
duction of  the  engine,  virtually  produces  the  things  in 
which  he  expends  his  wages. 

Or,  to  formularize  this  principle: 

The  demand  for  consumption  determines  the  direction  in 
which  labor  will  be  expended  in  production. 


76  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Bw^  L 

This  principle  is  so  simple  and  obvious  that  it  needs 
no  further  illustration,  yet  in  its  light  all  the  complexi- 
ties of  our  subject  disappear,  and  we  thus  reach  the  same 
view  of  the  real  objects  and  rewards  of  labor  in  the  intri- 
cacies of  modern  production  that  we  gained  by  observing 
in  the  first  beginnings  of  society  the  simpler  forms  of 
production  and  exchange.  We  see  that  now,  as  then, 
each  laborer  is  endeavoring  to  obtain  by  his  exertions  the 
satisfaction  of  his  own  desires;  we  see  that  although  the 
minute  division  of  labor  assigns  to  each  producer  the 
production  of  but  a  small  part,  or  perhaps  nothing  at  all,  of 
the  particular  things  he  labors  to  get,  yet,  in  aiding  in  the 
production  of  what  other  producers  want,  he  is  directing 
other  labor  to  the  production  of  the  things  he  wants — in 
effect,  producing  them  himself.  And  thus,  if  he  make 
jack-knives  and  eat  wheat,  the  wheat  is  really  as  much 
the  produce  of  his  labor  as  if  he  had  grown  it  for  himself 
and  left  wheat-growers  to  make  their  own  jack-knives. 

We  thus  see  how  thoroughly  and  completely  true  it 
is,  that  in  whatever  is  taken  or  consumed  by  laborers  in 
return  for  labor  rendered,  there  is  no  advance  of  capital 
to  the  laborers.  If  I  have  made  jack-knives,  and  with 
the  wages  received  have  bought  wheat,  I  have  simply  ex- 
changed jack-knives  for  wheat — added  jack-knives  to  the 
existing  stock  of  wealth  and  taken  wheat  from  it.  And 
as  the  demand  for  consumption  determines  the  direction 
in  which  labor  will  be  expended  in  production,  it  cannot 
even  be  said,  so  long  as  the  limit  of  wheat  production  has 
not  been  reached,  that  I  have  lessened  the  stock  of 
wheat,  for,  by  placing  jack-knives  in  the  exchangeable 
stock  of  wealth  and  taking  wheat  out,  I  have  determined 
labor  at  the  other  end  of  a  series  of  exchanges  to  the  pro- 
duction of  wheat,  just  as  the  wheat  grower,  by  putting  in 
wheat  and  demanding  jack-knives,  determined  labor  to 
the  production  of  jack-knives,  as  the  easiest  way  by 
which  wheat  could  be  obtained. 


Chap.  IV.      LABORERS  NOT  MAINTAINED   BY   CAPITAL.  77 

And  80  the  man  who  is  following  the  plow — though 
the  crop  for  which  he  is  opening  the  ground  is  not  yet 
sown,  and  after  being  sown  will  take  months  to  arrive  at 
maturity — he  is  yet,  by  the  exertion  of  his  labor  in  plow- 
ing, virtually  producing  the  food  he  eats  and  the  wages 
he  receives.  For,  though  plowing  is  but  a  part  of  the 
operation  of  producing  a  crop,  it  is  a  part,  and  as  neces- 
sary a  part  as  harvesting.  The  doing  of  it  is  a  step  to- 
ward procuring  a  crop,  which,  by  the  assurance  which  it 
gives  of  the  future  crop,  sets  free  from  the  stock  con- 
stantly held  the  subsistence  and  wages  of  the  plowman. 
This  is  not  merely  theoretically  true,  it  is  practically  and 
literally  true.  At  the  proper  time  for  plowing,  let  plow- 
ing cease.  Would  not  the  symptoms  of  scarcity  at  once 
manifest  themselves  without  waiting  for  the  time  of  the 
harvest  ?  'Let  plowing  cease,  and  would  not  the  effect  at 
once  be  felt  in  counting-room,  and  machine  shop,  and 
factory?  Would  not  loom  and  spindle  soon  stand  as  idle 
as  the  plow?  That  this  would  be  so,  we  see  in  the  effect 
which  immediately  follows  a  bad  season.  And  if  this 
would  be  so,  is  not  the  man  who  plows  really  producing 
his  subsistence  and  wages  as  much  as  though  during  the 
day  or  week  his  labor  actually  resulted  in  the  things  for 
which  his  labor  is  exchanged  ? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  where  there  is  labor  looking  for 
employment,  the  want  of  capital  does  not  prevent  the 
owner  of  land  which  promises  a  crop  for  which  there  is  a 
demand  from  hiring  it.  Either  he  makes  an  agreement 
to  cultivate  on  shares,  a  common  method  in  some  parts 
of  the  United  States,  in  which  case  the  laborers,  if  they 
are  without  means  of  subsistence,  will,  on  the  strength 
of  the  work  they  are  doing,  obtain  credit  at  the  nearest 
store;  or,  if  he  prefers  to  pay  wages,  the  farmer  will  him- 
self obtain  credit,  and  thus  the  work  done  in  cultivation 
is  immediately  utilized  or  exchanged  as  it  is  done.  If 
anything  more  will  be  used  up  than  would  be  used  up  if 


78  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  SoohL 

the  laborers  were  forced  to  beg  instead  of  to  work  (for  in 
any  civilized  country  during  a  normal  condition  of  things 
the  laborers  must  be  supported  anyhow),  it  will  be  the  re- 
serve capital  drawn  out  by  the  prospect  of  replacement,  and 
which  is  in  fact  replaced  by  the  work  as  it  is  done.  For 
instance,  in  the  purely  agricultural  districts  of  Southern 
California  there  was  in  1877  a  total  failure  of  the  crop, 
and  of  millions  of  sheep  nothing  remained  but  their 
bones.  In  the  great  San  Joaquin  Valley  were  many 
farmers  without  food  enough  to  support  their  families 
until  the  next  harvest  time,  let  alone  to  support  any 
laborers.  But  the  rains  came  again  in  proper  season, 
and  these  very  farmers  proceeded  to  hire  hands  to  plow 
and  to  sow.  For  every  here  and  there  was  a  farmer  who 
had  been  holding  back  part  of  his  crop.  As  soon  as  the 
rains  came  he  was  anxious  to  sell  before  the  next  harvest 
brought  lower  prices,  and  the  grain  thus  held  in  reserve, 
through  the  machinery  of  exchanges  and  advances, 
passed  to  the  use  of  the  cultivators — set  free,  in  effect 
produced,  by  the  work  done  for  the  next  crop. 

The  series  of  exchanges  which  unite  production  and 
consumption  may  be  likened  to  a  curved  pipe  filled  with 
water.  If  a  quantity  of  water  is  poured  in  at  one  end,  a 
like  quantity  is  released  at  the  other.  It  is  not  iden- 
tically the  same  water,  but  is  its  equivalent.  And  so 
they  who  do  the  work  of  production  put  in  as  they  take 
out — they  receive  in  subsistence  and  wages  but  the  prod- 
uce of  their  labor. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  REAL  FUNCTIONS  OP  CAPITAL. 

It  may  now  be  asked.  If  capital  is  not  required  for  the 
payment  of  wages  or  the  support  of  labor  during  produc- 
tion, what,  then,  are  its  functions? 

The  previous  examination  has  made  the  answer  clear. 
Capital,  as  we  have  seen,  consists  of  wealth  used  for  the 
procurement  of  more  wealth,  as  distinguished  from 
wealth  used  for  the  direct  satisfaction  of  desire;  or,  as  I 
think  it  may  be  defined,  of  wealth  in  the  course  oi 
exchange. 

Capital,  therefore,  increases  the  power  of  labor  to  pro- 
duce wealth:  (1)  By  enabling  labor  to  apply  itself  in 
more  effective  ways,  as  by  digging  up  clams  with  a  spade 
instead  of  the  hand,  or  moving  a  vessel  by  shoveling  coal 
into  a  furnace,  instead  of  tugging  at  an  oar.  (2)  By  en- 
abling labor  to  avail  itself  of  the  reproductive  forces  of 
nature,  as  to  obtain  corn  by  sowing  it,  or  animals  by 
breeding  them.  (3)  By  permitting  the  division  of  labor, 
and  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  increasing  the  eflBciency  of 
the  human  factor  of  wealth,  by  the  utilizatioa  of  special 
capabilities,  the  acquisition  of  skill,  and  the  reduction  of 
waste;  and,  on  the  other,  calling  in  the  powers  of  the 
natural  factor  at  their  highest,  by  taking  advantage  of 
the  diversities  of  soil,  climate  and  situation,  so  as  to  ob- 
tain each  particular  species  of  wealth  where  nature  is 
most  favorable  to  its  production. 

Capital  does  not  supply  the  materials  which  labor 
works  up  into  wealth,  as  is  erroneously  taught;  the  ma- 


80  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  BookL 

terials  of  wealth  are  supplied  by  nature.  But  such  ma- 
terials partially  worked  up  and  in  the  course  of  exchange 
are  capital. 

Capital  does  not  supply  or  advance  wages,  as  is  erro- 
neously taught.  Wages  are  that  part  of  the  produce  of 
his  labor  obtained  by  the  laborer. 

Capital  does  not  maintain  laborers  during  the  progress 
of  their  work,  as  is  erroneously  taught.  Laborers  are 
maintained  by  their  labor,  the  man  who  produces,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  anything  that  will  exchange  for  articles 
of  maintenance,  virtually  producing  that  maintenance. 

Capital,  therefore,  does  not  limit  industry,  as  is  erro- 
neouly  taught,  the  only  limit  to  industry  being  the  access 
to  natural  material.  But  capital  may  limit  the  form  of 
industry  and  the  productiveness  of  industry,  by  limiting 
the  use  of  tools  and  the  division  of  labor. 

That  capital  may  limit  the  form  of  industry  is  clear. 
Without  the  factory,  there  could  be  no  factory  opera- 
tives; without  the  sewing  machine,  no  machine  sewing; 
without  the  plow,  no  plowman;  and  without  a  great  capi- 
tal engaged  in  exchange,  industry  could  not  take  the 
many  special  forms  which  are  concerned  with  exchanges. 
It  is  also  as  clear  that  the  want  of  tools  must  greatly 
limit  the  productiveness  of  industry.  If  the  farmer 
must  use  the  spade  because  he  has  not  capital  enough  for 
a  plow,  the  sickle  instead  of  the  reaping  machine,  the 
flail  instead  of  the  thresher;  if  the  machinist  must  rely 
upon  the  chisel  for  cutting  iron;  the  weaver  on  the  hand 
loom,  and  so  on,  the  productiveness  of  industry  cannot 
be  a  tithe  of  what  it  is  when  aided  by  capital  in  the  shape 
of  the  best  tools  now  in  use.  Nor  could  the  division  of 
labor  go  further  than  the  very  rudest  and  almost  imper- 
ceptible beginnings,  nor  the  exchanges  which  make  it 
possible  extend  beyond  the  nearest  neighbors,  unless  a 
portion  of  the  things  produced  were  constantly  kept  in 
stock   or   in   transit.    Even   the  pursuits  of  hunting. 


Chap.  V.  THE   REAL  FUNCTIONS  OF  CAPITAL.  81 

fishing,  gathering  nuts,  and  making  weapons  could  not 
be  specialized  so  that  an  individual  could  devote  himself 
to  any  one,  unless  some  part  of  what  was  procured  by  each 
was  reserved  from  immediate  consumption,  so  that  he 
who  devoted  himself  to  the  procurement  of  things  of  one 
kind  could  obtain  the  others  as  he  wanted  them,  and 
could  make  the  good  luck  of  one  day  supply  the  short- 
comings of  the  next.  While  to  permit  the  minute  sub- 
division of  labor  that  is  characteristic  of,  and  necessary  to, 
high  civilization,  a  great  amount  of  wealth  of  all  descrip- 
tions must  be  constantly  kept  in  stock  or  in  transit.  To 
enable  the  resident  of  a  civilized  community  to  exchange 
his  labor  at  option  with  the  labor  of  those  around  him 
and  with  the  labor  of  men  in  the  most  remote  parts  of 
the  globe,  there  must  be  stocks  of  goods  in  warehouses, 
in  stores,  in  the  holds  of  ships,  and  in  railway  cars,  just 
as  to  enable  the  denizen  of  a  great  city  to  draw  at  will 
a  cupful  of  water,  there  must  be  thousands  of  millions 
of  gallons  stored  in  reservoirs  and  moving  through  miles 
of  pipe. 

But  to  say  that  capital  may  limit  the  form  of  industry 
or  the  productiveness  of  industry  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  saying  that  capital  limits  industry.  For  the  dictum 
of  the  current  political  economy  that  "capital  limits  in- 
dustry," means  not  that  capital  limits  the  form  of  labor 
or  the  productiveness  of  labor,  but  that  it  limits  the  ex- 
ertion of  labor.  This  proposition  derives  its  plausibility 
from  the  assumption  that  capital  supplies  labor  with  ma- 
terials and  maintenance — an  assumption  that  we  have 
seen  to  be  unfounded,  and  which  is  indeed  transparently 
preposterous  the  moment  it  is  remembered  that  capital  is 
produced  by  labor,  and  hence  that  there  must  be  labor 
before  there  can  be  capital.  Capital  may  limit  the  form 
of  industry  and  the  productiveness  of  industry;  but  this 
is  not  to  say  that  there  could  be  no  industry  without  capi- 
tal, any  more  than  it  is  to  say  that  without  the  power 


^  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Book  I. 

loom  there  could  be  no  weaving;  without  the  sewing 
machine  no  sewing;  no  cultivation  without  the  plow;  or 
that  in  a  community  of  one,  like  that  of  Eobinson 
Crusoe,  there  could  be  no  labor  because  there  could  be 
no  exchange. 

And  to  say  that  capital  may  limit  the  form  and  pro- 
ductiveness of  industry  is  a  different  thing  from  saying 
that  capital  does.  For  the  cases  in  which  it  can  be  truly 
said  that  the  form  of  productiveness  of  the  industry  of  a 
community  is  limited  by  its  capital,  will,  I  think,  appear 
upon  examination  to  be  more  theoretical  than  real.  It  is 
evident  that  in  such  a  country  as  Mexico  or  Tunis  the 
larger  and  more  general  use  of  capital  would  greatly 
change  the  forms  of  industry  and  enormously  increase 
its  productiveness;  and  it  is  often  said  of  such  countries 
that  they  need  capital  for  the  development  of  their  re- 
sources. But  is  there  not  something  back  of  this — a 
want  which  includes  the  want  of  capital?  Is  it  not  the 
rapacity  and  abuses  of  government,  the  insecurity  of 
property,  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  the  people,  that 
prevent  the  accumulation  and  use  of  capital?  Is  not 
the  real  limitation  in  these  things,  and  not  in  the  want 
of  capital,  which  would  not  be  used  even  if  placed  there? 
We  can,  of  course,  imagine  a  community  in  which  the 
want  of  capital  would  be  the  only  obstacle  to  an  increased 
productiveness  of  labor,  but  it  is  only  by  imagining  a 
conjunction  of  conditions  that  seldom,  if  ever,  occurs, 
except  by  accident  or  as  a  passing  phase.  A  community 
in  which  capital  has  been  swept  away  by  war,  conflagra- 
tion, or  convulsion  of  nature,  and,  possibly,  a  community 
composed  of  civilized  people  just  settled  in  a  new  land, 
seem  to  me  to  furnish  the  only  examples.  Yet  how 
quickly  the  capital  habitually  used  is  reproduced  in  a 
community  that  has  been  swept  by  war,  has  long  been 
noticed,  while  the  rapid  production  of  the  capital  it  can. 


Chap.  V.  THE  BEAL  FUNCTIONS  OF  CAPITAL.  83 

or  is  disposed  to  use,  is  equally  noticeable  in  the  case  of 
a  new  community. 

I  am  unable  to  think  of  any  other  than  such  rare  and 
passing  conditions  in  which  the  productiveness  of  labor 
is  really  limited  by  the  want  of  capital.  For,  although 
there  may  be  in  a  community  individuals  who  from  want 
of  capital  cannot  apply  their  labor  as  efficiently  as  they 
would,  yet  so  long  as  there  is  a  sufficiency  of  capital  in  the 
community  at  large,  the  real  limitation  is  not  the  want  of 
capital,  but  the  want  of  its  proper  distribution.  If  bad 
government  rob  the  laborer  of  his  capital,  if  unjust  laws 
take  from  the  producer  the  wealth  with  which  he  would 
assist  production,  and  hand  it  over  to  those  who  are  mere 
pensioners  upon  industry,  the  real  limitation  to  the 
effectiveness  of  labor  is  in  misgovernment,  and  not  in 
want  of  capital.  And  so  of  ignorance,  or  custom,  or 
other  conditions  which  prevent  the  use  of  capital.  It  is 
they,  not  the  want  of  capital,  that  really  constitute  the 
limitation.  To  give  a  circular  saw  to  a  Terra  del 
Fuegan,  a  locomotive  to  a  Bedouin  Arab,  or  a  sewing 
machine  to  a  Flathead  squaw,  would  not  be  to  add  to  the 
efficiency  of  their  labor.  Neither  does  it  seem  possible 
by  giving  anything  else  to  add  to  their  capital,  for  any 
wealth  beyond  what  they  had  been  accustomed  to  use  as 
capital  would  be  consumed  or  suffered  to  waste.  It  is 
not  the  want  of  seeds  and  tools  that  keeps  the  Apache 
and  the  Sioux  from  cultivating  the  soil.  If  provided 
with  seeds  and  tools  they  would  not  use  them  produc- 
tively unless  at  the  same  time  restrained  from  wandering 
and  taught  to  cultivate  the  soil.  If  all  the  capital  of  a 
London  were  given  them  in  their  present  condition,  it 
would  simply  cease  to  be  capital,  for  they  would  only  use 
productively  such  infinitesimal  part  as  might  assist  in 
the  chase,  and  would  not  even  use  that  until  all  the 
edible  part  of  the  stock  thus  showered  upon  them  had 
been   consumed.    Yet  such    capital  as  they   do   want 


84  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Bodk  L 

they  manage  to  acquire,  and  in  some  forms  in  spite  of 
the  greatest  difficulties.  These  wild  tribes  hunt  and 
fight  with  the  best  weapons  that  American  and  English 
factories  produce,  keeping  up  with  the  latest  improve- 
ments. It  is  only  as  they  became  civilized  that  they 
would  care  for  such  other  capital  as  the  civilized  state 
requires,  or  that  it  would  be  of  any  use  to  them. 

In  the  reign  of  George  IV.,  some  returning  mission- 
aries took  with  them  to  England  a  New  Zealand  chief 
called  Hongi.  His  noble  appearance  and  beautiful 
tatooing  attracted  much  attention,  and  when  about  to 
return  to  his  people  he  was  presented  by  the  monarch 
and  some  of  the  religious  societies  with  a  considerable 
stock  of  tools,  agricultural  instruments,  and  seeds. 
The  grateful  New  Zealander  did  use  this  capital  in  the 
production  of  food,  but  it  was  in  a  manner  of  which  his 
English  entertainers  little  dreamed.  In  Sydney,  on  his 
way  back,  he  exchanged  it  all  for  arms  and  ammunition, 
with  which,  on  getting  home,  he  began  war  against  an- 
other tribe  with  such  success  that  on  the  first  battle  field 
three  hundred  of  his  prisoners  were  cooked  and  eaten, 
Hongi  having  preluded  the  main  repast  by  scooping  out 
and  swallowing  the  eyes  and  sucking  the  warm  blood  of 
his  mortally  wounded  adversary,  the  opposing  chief.* 
But  now  that  their  once  constant  wars  have  ceased,  and 
the  remnant  of  the  Maoris  have  largely  adopted  European 
habits,  there  are  among  them  many  who  have  and  use 
considerable  amounts  of  capital. 

Likewise  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  attribute  the  simple 
modes  of  production  and  exchange  which  are  resorted  to 
in  new  communities  solely  to  a  want  of  capital.  These 
modes,  which  require  little  capital,  are  in  themselves 
rude  and  inefficient,  but  when  the  conditions  of  such 

•New  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants.    Rev.  Richard  Taylor.    Lon- 
don, 1855.    Chap.  XXI. 


Chap.V.  THE  REAL  FUNCTIONS  OF  CAPITAL.  85 

communities  are  considered,  they  will  be  found  in  reality 
the  most  effective.  A  great  factory  with  all  the  latest 
improvements  is  the  most  efficient  instrument  that  has 
yet  been  devised  for  turning  wool  or  cotton  into  cloth, 
but  only  so  where  large  quantities  are  to  be  made.  The 
cloth  required  for  a  little  village  could  be  made  with  far 
less  labor  by  the  spinning  wheel  and  hand  loom.  A 
perfecting  press  will,  for  each  man  required,  print  many 
thousand  impressions  while  a  man  and  a  boy  would  be 
printing  a  hundred  with  a  Stanhope  or  Franklin  press; 
yet  to  work  off  the  small  edition  of  a  country  newspaper 
the  old-fashioned  press  is  by  far  the  most  efficient  ma- 
chine. To  carry  occasionally  two  or  three  passengers,  a 
canoe  is  a  better  instrument  than  a  steamboat;  a  few 
sacks  of  flour  can  be  transported  with  less  expenditure 
of  labor  by  a  pack  horse  than  by  a  railroad  train;  to  put 
a  great  stock  of  goods  into  a  cross-roads  store  in  the 
backwoods  would  be  but  to  waste  capital.  And,  gener- 
ally, it  will  be  found  that  the  rude  devices  of  production 
and  exchange  which  obtain  among  the  sparse  populations 
of  new  countries  result  not  so  much  from  the  want  of 
capital  as  from  inability  profitably  to  employ  it. 

As,  no  matter  how  much  water  is  poured  in,  there  can 
never  be  in  a  bucket  more  than  a  bucketful,  so  no 
greater  amount  of  wealth  will  be  used  as  capital  than  is 
required  by  the  machinery  of  production  and  exchange 
that  under  all  the  existing  conditions — intelligence, 
habit,  security,  density  of  population,  etc. — best  suit  the 
people.  And  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  as  a  general 
rule  this  amount  will  be  had — that  the  social  organism 
secretes,  as  it  were,  the  necessary  amount  of  capital  just 
as  the  human  organism  in  a  healthy  condition  secretes 
the  requisite  fat. 

But  whether  the  amount  of  capital  ever  does  limit  the 
productiveness  of  industry,  and  thus  fix  a  maximum 
which  wages  cannot  exceed,  it  is  evident  that  it  is  not 


86  WAGES  AND  CAPITAL.  Booh  I 

from  any  scarcity  of  capital  that  the  poverty  of  the 
masses  in  civilized  countries  proceeds.  For  not  only  do 
wages  nowhere  reach  the  limit  fixed  by  the  productive- 
ness of  industry,  but  wages  are  relatively  the  lowest 
where  capital  is  most  abundant.  The  tools  and  machin- 
ery of  production  are  in  all  the  most  progressive  coun- 
tries evidently  in  excess  of  the  use  made  of  them,  and 
any  prospect  of  remunerative  employment  brings  out 
more  than  the  capital  needed.  The  bucket  is  not  only 
full;  it  is  overflowing.  So  evident  is  this,  that  not  only 
among  the  ignorant,  but  by  men  of  high  economic  repu- 
tation, is  industrial  depression  attributed  to  the  abun- 
dance of  machinery  and  the  accumulation  of  capital; 
and  war,  which  is  the  destruction  of  capital,  is  looked 
upon  as  the  cause  of  brisk  trade  and  high  wages — an  idea 
strangely  enough,  so  great  is  the  confusion  of  thought 
on  such  matters,  countenanced  by  many  who  hold  that 
capital  employs  labor  and  pays  wages. 


Our  purpose  in  this  inquiry  is  to  solve  the  problem  to 
which  so  many  self-contradictory  answers  are  given.  In 
ascertaining  clearly  what  capital  really  is  and  what  capi- 
tal really  does,  we  have  made  the  first,  and  an  all-impor- 
tant step.  But  it  is  only  a  first  step.  Let  us  recapitulate 
and  proceed. 

We  have  seen  that  the  current  theory  that  wages  de- 
pend upon  the  ratio  between  the  number  of  laborers  and 
the  amount  of  capital  devoted  to  the  employment  of 
labor  is  inconsistent  with  the  general  fact  that  wages  and 
interest  do  not  rise  and  fall  inversely,  but  conjointly. 

This  discrepancy  having  led  us  to  an  examination  of 
the  grounds  of  the  theory,  we  have  seen,  further,  that, 
contrary  to  the  current  idea,  wages  are  not  drawn  from 
capital  at  all,  but  come  directly  from  the  produce  of  the 
labor  for  which  they  are  paid.     We  have  seen  that  capi- 


autp.  V.  EECAPITULATIOlir.  87 

tal  does  not  advance  wages  or  subsist  laborers,  but  that 
its  functions  are  to  assist  labor  in  production  with  tools, 
seed,  etc.,  and  with  the  wealth  required  to  carry  on  ex- 
changes. 

We  are  thus  irresistibly  led  to  practical  conclusions  so 
important  as  amply  to  justify  the  pains  taken  to  make 
sure  of  them. 

For  if  wages  aro  drawn,  not  from  capital,  but  from  the 
produce  of  labor,  the  current  theories  as  to  the  relations 
of  capital  and  labor  are  invalid,  and  all  remedies,  whether 
proposed  by  professors  of  political  economy  or  working- 
men,  which  look  to  the  alleviation  of  poverty  either  by 
the  increase  of  capital  or  the  restriction  of  the  number 
of  laborers  or  the  efficiency  of  their  work,  must  be  con- 
demned. 

If  each  laborer  in  performing  the  labor  really  creates 
the  fund  from  which  his  wages  are  drawn,  then  wages 
cannot  be  diminished  by  the  increase  of  laborers,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  as  the  efficiency  of  labor  manifestly  increases 
with  the  number  of  laborers,  the  more  laborers,  other 
things  being  equal,  the  higher  should  wages  be. 

But  this  necessary  proviso,  *'other  things  being  equal," 
brings  us  to  a  question  which  must  be  considered  and 
disposed  of  before  we  can  further  proceed.  That  ques- 
tion is.  Do  the  productive  powers  of  nature  tend  to 
diminish  with  the  increasing  drafts  made  upon  them  by 
increasing  population? 


BOOK  II. 

POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE. 


CHAPTER      I. — ^THB     MALTHUSIAN    THEORY,    ITS    GENESIS 

AND  SUPPORT. 
CHAPTER     II. — INFERENCES   FROM    FACTS. 
CHAPTER  III. — INFERENCES   FROM  ANALOGY. 
CHAPTER  IV. — DISPROOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY. 


Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 
That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams? 
So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 

80  careless  of  the  single  life. 

— Tennya&n. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY,   ITS  GENESIS  AND  SUPPORT. 

Behind  the  theory  we  have  been  considering  lies  a 
theory  we  have  yet  to  consider.  The  current  doctrine  as 
to  the  derivation  and  law  of  wages  finds  its  strongest 
support  in  a  doctrine  as  generally  accepted — the  doctrine 
to  which  Malthus  has  given  his  name — that  population 
naturally  tends  to  increase  faster  than  subsistence. 
These  two  doctrines,  fitting  in  with  each  other,  frame 
the  answer  which  the  current  political  economy  gives  to 
the  great  problem  we  are  endeavoring  to  solve. 

In  what  has  preceded,  the  current  doctrine  that  wages 
are  determined  by  the  ratio  between  capital  and  laborers 
has,  I  think,  been  shown  to  be  so  utterly  baseless  as  to 
excite  surprise  as  to  how  it  could  so  generally  and  so 
long  obtain.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  such  a 
theory  should  have  arisen  in  a  state  of  society  where  the 
great  body  of  laborers  seem  to  depend  for  employment 
and  wages  upon  a  separate  class  of  capitalists,  nor  yet 
that  under  these  conditions  it  should  have  maintained 
itself  among  the  masses  of  men,  who  rarely  take  the 
trouble  to  separate  the  real  from  the  apparent.  But  it 
is  surprising  that  a  theory  which  on  examination  appears 
to  be  so  groundless  could  have  been  successively  accepted 
by  so  many  acute  thinkers  as  have  during  the  present 
century  devoted  their  powers  to  the  elucidation  and 
development  of  the  science  of  political  economy. 

The  explanation  of  this  otherwise  unaccountable  fact 
is  to  be  found  in  the  general  acceptance  of  the  Malthu- 
sian  theory.  The  current  theory  of  wages  has  never 
been  fairly  put  upon  its  trial,  because,  backed  by  the 


92  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  U. 

Malthusian  theory,  it  has  seemed  in  the  minds  of  polit- 
ical economists  a  self-evident  truth.  These  two  theories 
mutually  blend  with,  strengthen,  and  defend  each  other, 
while  they  both  derive  additional  support  from  a  princi- 
ple brought  prominently  forward  in  the  discussions  of 
the  theory  of  rent — viz.,  that  past  a  certain  point  the 
application  of  capital  and  labor  to  land  yields  a  diminish- 
ing return.  Together  they  give  such  an  explanation  of 
the  phenomena  presented  in  a  highly  organized  and 
advancing  society  as  seems  to  fit  all  the  facts,  and  which 
has  thus  prevented  closer  investigation. 

Which  of  these  two  theories  is  entitled  to  historical 
precedence  it  is  hard  to  say.  The  theory  of  population 
was  not  formulated  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  it  the  stand- 
ing of  a  scientific  dogma  until  after  that  had  been  done 
for  the  theory  of  wages.  But  they  naturally  spring  up 
and  grow  with  each  other,  and  were  both  held  in  a  form 
more  or  less  crude  long  prior  to  any  attempt  to  construct 
a  system  of  political  economy.  It  is  evident,  from  several 
passages,  that  though  he  never  fully  developed  it,  the 
Malthusian  theory  was  in  rudimentary  form  present  in 
the  mind  of  Adam  Smith,  and  to  this,  it  seems  to  me, 
must  be  largely  due  the  misdirection  which  on  the  sub- 
ject of  wages  his  speculations  took.  But,  however  this 
may  be,  so  closely  are  the  two  theories  connected,  so 
completely  do  they  complement  each  other,  that  Buckle, 
reviewing  the  history  of  the  development  of  political 
economy  in  his  ''Examination  of  the  Scotch  Intellect 
during  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  attributes  mainly  to 
Malthus  the  honor  of  "decisively  proving"  the  current 
theory  of  wages  by  advancing  the  current  theory  of  the 
pressure  of  population  upon  subsistence.  He  says  in 
his  "History  of  Civilization  in  England,"  Vol.  3,  Chap.  5: 

"  Scarcely  had  the  Eighteenth  Century  passed  away  when  it  was 
decisively  proved  that  the  reward  of  labor  depends  solely  on  two 
tilings;  namely,  the  magnitude  of  that  national  fund  out  of  which 


Chap.  1.  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  93 

all  labor  is  paid,  and  the  number  of  laborers  among  whom  the  fund 
is  to  be  divided.  This  vast  step  in  our  knowledge  is  due,  mainly, 
though  not  entirely,  to  Malthiis.  whose  work  on  population,  besides 
marking  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  speculative  thought,  has  already 
produced  considerable  practical  results,  and  will  probably  give  rise 
to  others  more  considerable  still.  It  was  published  in  1798;  so  that 
Adam  Smith,  who  died  in  1790,  missed  what  to  him  would  have 
been  the  intense  pleasure  of  seeing  how,  in  it,  his  own  views  were 
expanded  rather  than  corrected.  Indeed,  it  is  certain  that  without 
Smith  there  would  have  been  no  Mai  thus;  that  is,  unless  Smith  had 
laid  the  foundation,  Malthus  could  not  have  raised  the  super- 
structure." 

The  famous  doctrine  which  ever  since  its  enunciation 
has  so  powerfully  influenced  thought,  not  alone  in  the 
province  of  political  economy,  but  in  regions  of  even 
higher  speculation,  was  formulated  by  Malthus  in  the 
proposition  that,  as  shown  by  the  growth  of  the  North 
American  colonies,  the  natural  tendency  of  population 
is  to  double  itself  at  least  every  twenty-five  years,  thus 
increasing  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  while  the  subsistence 
that  can  be  obtained  from  land  "under  circumstances 
the  most  favorable  to  human  industry  could  not  possibly 
be  made  to  increase  faster  than  in  an  arithmetical  ratio, 
or  by  an  addition  every  twenty-five  years  of  a  quantity 
equal  to  what  it  at  present  produces."  "The  necessary 
effects  of  these  two  different  rates  of  increase,  when 
brought  together,"  Mr.  Malthus  naively  goes  on  to  say, 
"will  be  very  striking."  And  thus  (Chap.  I)  he  brings 
them  together: 

"Let  us  call  the  population  of  this  island  eleven  millions;  and 
suppose  the  present  produce  equal  to  the  easy  support  of  such  a 
number.  In  the  first  twenty-five  years  the  population  would  be 
twenty-two  millions,  and  the  food  being  also  doubled,  the  means  of 
subsistence  would  be  equal  to  this  increase.  In  the  next  twenty-five 
years  the  population  would  be  forty-four  millions,  and  the  means  of 
subsistance  only  equal  to  the  support  of  thirty-three  millions.  In 
the  next  period  the  population  would  be  equal  to  eighty-eight  mil- 
lions, and  the  means  of  subsistence  just  equal  to  the  support  of  hftif 


94  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  H. 

that  number.  And  at  the  conclusion  of  the  first  century,  the  popu- 
lation would  be  a  hundred  and  seventy-six  millions,  and  the  means  of 
subsistence  only  equal  to  the  support  of  fifty-five  millions;  leaving  a 
population  of  a  hundred  and  twenty-one  millions  totally  unprovided 
for. 

•'Taking  the  whole  earth  instead  of  this  island,  emigration  would 
of  course  be  excluded;  and  supposing  the  present  population  equal 
to  a  thousand  millions,  the  human  species  would  increase  as  the 
numbers  1,  2,  4,  8, 16,  32,  64, 128,  256,  and  subsistence  as  1,  2,  3,  4,  5, 
6,  7,  8,  9.  In  two  centuries  the  population  would  be  to  the  means 
of  subsistence  as  256  to  9;  in  three  centuries,  4,096  to  13,  and  in  two 
thousand  years  the  difference  would  be  almost  incalculable." 

Such  a  result  is  of  course  prevented  by  the  physical 
fact  that  no  more  people  can  exist  than  can  find  subsist- 
ence, and  hence  Malthus'  conclusion  is,  that  this  ten- 
dency of  population  to  indefinite  increase  must  be  held 
back  either  by  moral  restraint  upon  the  reproductive 
faculty,  or  by  the  various  causes  which  increase  mortality, 
which  he  resolves  into  vice  and  misery.  Such  causes  as 
prevent  propagation  he  styles  the  preventive  check; 
such  causes  as  increase  mortality  he  styles  the  positive 
check.  This  is  the  famous  Malthusian  doctrine,  as 
promulgated  by  Malthus  himself  in  the  *' Essay  on  Popu- 
lation." 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  dwell  upon  the  fallacy  in- 
Yolved  in  the  assumption  of  geometrical  and  arithmetical 
rates  of  increase,  a  play  upon  proportions  which  hardly 
rises  to  the  dignity  of  that  in  the  familiar  puzzle  of  the 
hare  and  the  tortoise,  in  which  the  hare  is  made  to  chase 
the  tortoise  through  all  eternity  without  coming  up  with 
him.  For  this  assumption  is  not  necessary  to  the  Mal- 
thusian doctrine,  or  at  least  is  expressly  repudiated  by 
some  of  those  who  fully  accept  that  doctrine;  as,  for  in- 
stance, John  Stuart  Mill,  who  speaks  of  it  as  "an  un- 
lucky attempt  to  give  precision  to  things  which  do  not 
admit  of  it,  which  every  person  capable  of    reasoning 


Chap.  I.  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  95 

must  see  is  wholly  superfluous  to  the  argument."  *  The 
essence  of  the  Malthusian  doctrine  is,  that  population 
tends  to  increase  faster  than  the  power  of  providing  food, 
and  whether  this  difference  be  stated  as  a  geometrical 
ratio  for  population  and  an  arithmetical  ratio  for  subsist- 
ence, as  by  Malthus;  or  as  a  constant  ratio  for  popula- 
tion and  a  diminishing  ratio  for  subsistence,  as  by  Mill, 
is  only  a  matter  of  statement.  The  vital  point,  on 
which  both  agree,  is,  to  use  the  words  of  Mathus,  "that 
there  is  a  natural  tendency  and  constant  effort  in  popu- 
lation to  increase  beyond  the  means  of  subsistence." 

The  Malthusian  doctrine,  as  at  present  held,  may  be 
thus  stated  in  its  strongest  and  least  objectionable  form: 

That  population,  constantly  tending  to  increase,  must, 
when  unrestrained,  ultimately  press  against  the  limits  of 
subsistence,  not  as  against  a  fixed,  but  as  against  an 
elastic  barrier,  which  makes  the  procurement  of  subsist- 
ence progressively  more  and  more  difficult,  And  thus, 
wherever  reproduction  has  had  time  to  assert  its  power, 
and  is  unchecked  by  prudence,  there  must  exist  that  de- 
gree of  want  which  will  keep  population  within  the 
bounds  of  subsistence. 

Although  in  reality  not  more  repugnant  to  the  sense 
of  harmonious  adaptation  by  creative  beneficence  and  wis- 
dom than  the  complacent  no-theory  which  throws  the 
responsibility  for  poverty  and  its  concomitants  upon  the 
inscrutable  decrees  of  Providence,  without  attempting  to 
trace  them,  this  theory,  in  avowedly  making  vice  and 
suffering  the  necessary  results  of  a  natural  instinct  with 

•Principles  of  Political  Economy,  Book  II,  Chap.  IX.,  Sec.  VI. 
— Yet  notwithstanding  what  Mill  says,  it  is  clear  that  Malthus  him- 
self lays  great  stress  upon  his  geometrical  and  arithmetical  ratios, 
and  it  is  also  probable  that  it  is  to  these  ratios  that  Malthus  is  largely 
indebted  for  his  fame,  as  they  supplied  one  of  those  high-sounding 
formulas  that  with  many  people  carry  far  more  weight  than  the 
clearest  reasoning. 


9$  POPTJLATIOX  AND  SUBSISTElfCE.  Book  D. 

which  are  linked  the  purest  and  sweetest  affections, 
comes  rudely  in  collision  with  ideas  deeply  rooted  in  the 
hnman  mind,  and  it  was,  as  soon  as  formally  promul- 
gated, fought  with  a  bitterness  in  which  zeal  was  often 
more  manifest  than  logic.  But  it  has  triumphantly 
withstood  the  ordeal,  and  in  spite  of  the  refutations  of 
the  Godwins,  the  denunciations  of  the  Cobbetts,  and  all 
the  shafts  that  argument,  sarcasm,  ridicule,  and  senti- 
ment could  direct  against  it,  to-day  it  stands  in  the  world 
of  thought  as  an  accepted  truth,  which  compels  the 
recognition  even  of  those  who  would  fain  disbelieve  it. 

The  causes  of  its  triumph,  the  sources  of  its  strength, 
are  not  obscure.  Seemingly  backed  by  an  indisputable 
arithmetical  truth — that  a  continuously  increasing  popu- 
lation must  eventually  exceed  the  capacity  of  the  earth 
to  furnish  food  or  even  standing  room,  the  Malthusian 
theory  is  supported  by  analogies  in  the  animal  and  vege- 
table kingdoms,  where  life  everywhere  beats  wastefully 
against  the  barriers  that  hold  its  different  species  in 
check — analogies  to  which  the  course  of  modem  thought, 
in  leveling  distinctions  between  different  forms  of  life, 
has  given  a  greater  and  greater  weight;  and  it  is  appar- 
ently corroborated  by  many  obvious  facts,  such  as  the 
prevalence  of  poverty,  vice,  and  misery  amid  dense  pop- 
ulations; the  general  effect  of  material  progress  in  in- 
creasing population  without  relieving  pauperism;  the 
rapid  growth  of  numbers  in  newly  settled  countries  and 
the  evident  retardation  of  increase  in  more  densely  set- 
tled countries  by  the  mortality  among  the  class  con- 
demned to  want. 

The  Malthusian  theory  furnishes  a  general  principle 
which  accounts  for  these  and  similar  facts,  and  accounts 
for  them  in  a  way  which  harmonizes  with  the  doctrine 
that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital,  and  with  all  the  prin- 
ciples that  are  deduced  from  it.  According  to  the  cur- 
rent doctrine  of  wages,  wages  fall  as  increase  in  the  num- 


Chap.L^  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  97 

ber  of  laborers  necessitates  a  more  minute  division  of 
capital;  according  to  the  Malthusian  theory,  poverty 
appears  as  increase  in  population  necessitates  the  more 
minute  division  of  subsistence.  It  requires  but  the 
identification  of  capital  with  subsistence,  and  number  of 
laborers  with  population,  an  identification  made  in  the 
current  treatises  on  political  economy,  where  the  terms 
are  often  converted,  to  make  the  two  propositions  as 
identical  formally  as  they  are  substantially.*  And  thus 
it  is,  as  stated  by  Buckle  in  the  passage  previously 
quoted,  that  the  theory  of  population  advanced  by  Mal- 
thus  has  appeared  to  prove  decisively  the  theory  of  wages 
advanced  by  Smith. 

Ricardo,  who  a  few  years  subsequent  to  the  publica- 
tion of  the  "Essay  on  Population'*  corrected  the  mistake 
into  which  Smith  had  fallen  as  to  the  nature  and  cause 
of  rent,  furnished  the  Malthusian  theory  an  additional 
support  by  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  rent  would 
increase  as  the  necessities  of  increasing  population  forced 
cultivation  to  less  and  less  productive  lands,  or  to  less 
and  less  productive  points  on  the  same  lands,  thus  ex- 
plaining the  rise  of  rent.  In  this  way  was  formed  a 
triple  combination,  by  which  the  Malthusian  theory  has 
been  buttressed  on  both  sides — the  previously  received 
doctrine  of  wages  and  the  subsequently  received  doctrine 
of  rent  exhibiting  in  this  view  but  special  examples  of 
the  operation  of  the  general  principle  to  which  the  name 
of  Malthus  has  been  attached — the  fall  in  wages  and  the 
rise  in  rents  which  come  with  increasing  population 
being  but  modes  in  which  the  pressure  of  population 
upon  subsistence  shows  itself. 

Thus  taking  its  place  in  the  very  framework  of  polit- 

*  The  effect  of  the  Malthusian  doctrine  upon  the  definitions  of 
capital  may,  I  think,  be  seen  by  comparing  (see  pp.  33,  33,  34)  the  defi- 
nition of  Smith,  who  wrote  prior  to  Malthus,  with  the  definitions  of 
Ricardo,  McCulloch  and  Mill,  who  wrote  subsequently. 


98  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  U. 

ical  economy  (for  the  science  as  currently  accepted  has 
undergone  no  material  change  or  improvement  since  the 
time  of  Eicardo,  though  in  some  minor  points  it  has  been 
cleared  and  illustrated),  the  Malthusian  theory,  though 
repugnant  to  sentiments  before  alluded  to,  is  not  repug- 
nant to  other  ideas,  which,  in  older  countries  at  least, 
generally  prevail  among  the  working  classes;  but,  on 
the  contrary,  like  the  theory  of  wages  by  which  it  is 
supported  and  in  turn  supports,  it  harmonizes  with 
them.  To  the  mechanic  or  operative  the  cause  of  low 
wages  and  of  the  inability  to  get  employment  is  obviously 
the  competition  caused  by  the  pressure  of  numbers,  and 
in  the  squalid  abodes  of  poverty  what  seems  clearer  than 
that  there  are  too  many  people? 

But  the  great  cause  of  the  triumph  of  this  theory  is, 
that,  instead  of  menacing  any  vested  right  or  antagoniz- 
ing any  powerful  interest,  it  is  eminently  soothing  and 
reassuring  to  the  classes  who,  wielding  the  power  of 
wealth,  largely  dominate  thought.  At  a  time  when  old 
supports  were  falling  away,  it  came  to  the  rescue  of  the 
special  privileges  by  which  a  few  monopolize  so  much 
of  the  good  things  of  this  world,  proclaiming  a  natural 
cause  for  the  want  and  misery  which,  if  attributed  to 
political  institutions,  must  condemn  every  government 
under  which  they  exist.  The  "Essay  on  Population" 
was  avowedly  a  reply  to  William  Godwin's  "Inquiry  con- 
cerning Political  Justice,"  a  work  asserting  the  principle 
of  human  equality;  and  its  purpose  was  to  justify  exist- 
ing inequality  by  shifting  the  responsibility  for  it  from 
human  institutions  to  the  laws  of  the  Creator.  There 
was  nothing  new  in  this,  for  Wallace,  nearly  forty  years 
before,  had  brought  forward  the  danger  of  excessive 
multiplication  as  the  answer  to  the  demands  of  justice 
for  an  equal  distribution  of  wealth;  but  the  circum- 
stances of  the  times  were  such  as  to  make  the  same  idea, 
when  brought  forward  by  Malthus,  peculiarly  grateful 


Chap.l.  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  99 

to  a  powerful  class,  in  whom  an  intense  fear  of  any  ques- 
tioning of  the  existing  state  of  things  had  been  generated 
by  the  outburst  of  the  French  Revolution. 

Now,  as  then,  the  Malthusian  doctrine  parries  the  de- 
mand for  reform,  and  shelters  selfishness  from  question 
and  from  conscience  by  the  interposition  of  an  inevitable 
necessity.  It  furnishes  a  philosophy  by  which  Dives  as  he 
feasts  can  shut  out  the  image  of  Lazarus  who  faints  with 
hunger  at  his  door;  by  which  wealth  may  complacently  but- 
ton up  its  pocket  when  poverty  asks  an  alms,  and  the  rich 
Christian  bend  on  Sundays  in  a  nicely  upholstered  pew 
to  implore  the  good  gifts  of  the  All  Father  without  any 
feeling  of  responsibility  for  the  squalid  misery  that  is 
festering  but  a  square  away.  For  poverty,  want,  and 
starvation  are  by  this  theory  not  chargeable  either  to  in- 
dividual greed  or  to  social  mal-adjustments;  they  are 
the  inevitable  results  of  universal  laws,  with  which,  if  it 
were  not  impious,  it  were  as  hopeless  to  quarrel  as  with 
the  law  of  gravitation.  In  this  view,  he  who  in  the 
midst  of  want  has  accumulated  wealth,  has  but  fenced 
in  a  little  oasis  from  the  driving  sand  which  else  would 
have  overwhelmed  it.  He  has  gained  for  himself,  but 
has  hurt  nobody.  And  even  if  the  rich  were  literally  to 
obey  the  injunctions  of  Christ  and  divide  their  wealth 
among  the  poor,  nothing  would  be  gained.  Population 
would  be  increased,  only  to  press  again  upon  the  limits 
of  subsistence  or  capital,  and  the  equality  that  would  be 
produced  would  be  but  the  equality  of  common  misery. 
And  thus  reforms  which  would  interfere  with  the  inter- 
ests of  any  powerful  class  are  discouraged  as  hopeless. 
As  the  moral  law  forbids  any  forestalling  of  the  methods 
by  which  the  natural  law  gets  rid  of  surplus  population 
and  thus  holds  in  check  a  tendency  to  increase  potent 
enough  to  pack  the  surface  of  the  globe  with  human 
beings  as  sardines  are  packed  in  a  box,  nothing  can 
really  be  done,  either  by  individual  or  by  combined 


100  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  II. 

effort,  to  extirpate  poverty,  save  to  trust  to  the  efiBcacy 
of  education  and  preach  the  necessity  of  prudence. 

A  theory  that,  falling  in  with  the  habits  of  thought  of 
the  poorer  classes,  thus  justifies  the  greed  of  the  rich 
and  the  selfishness  of  the  powerful,  will  spread  quickly 
and  strike  its  roots  deep.  This  has  been  the  case  with 
the  theory  advanced  by  Malthus. 

And  of  late  years  the  Malthusian  theory  has  received 
new  support  in  the  rapid  change  of  ideas  as  to  the  origin 
of  man  and  the  genesis  of  species.  That  Buckle  was 
right  in  saying  that  th6  promulgation  of  the  Malthusian 
theory  marked  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  speculative 
thought  could,  it  seems  to  me,  be  easily  shown;  yet  to 
trace  its  influence  in  the  higher  domains  of  philosophy, 
of  which  Buckle's  own  work  is  an  example,  would, 
though  extremely  interesting,  carry  us  beyond  the  scope 
of  this  investigation.  But  how  much  be  reflex  and  how 
much  original,  the  support  which  is  given  to  the  Malthu- 
sian theory  by  the  new  philosophy  of  development,  now 
rapidly  spreading  in  every  direction,  must  be  noted  in 
any  estimate  of  the  sources  from  which  this  theory  de- 
rives its  present  strength.  As  in  political  economy,  the 
support  received  from  the  doctrine  of  wages  and  the 
doctrine  of  rent  combined  to  raise  the  Malthusian  theory 
to  the  rank  of  a  central  truth,  so  the  extension  of  similar 
ideas  to  the  development  of  life  in  all  its  forms  has  the 
effect  of  giving  it  a  still  higher  and  more  impregnable 
position.  Agassiz,  who,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  was  a 
strenuous  opponent  of  the  new  philosophy,  spoke  of 
Darwinism  as  "Malthus  all  over,"  *  and  Darwin  himself 
says  the  struggle  for  existence  "is  the  doctrine  of  Mal- 
thus applied  with  manifold  force  to  the  whole  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms."! 

♦Address  before  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Agriculture^  18721 
Report  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  1873. 
t  Origin  of  Species,  Chap.  III. 


Oiap.  L  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  101 

It  does  not,  however,  seem  to  me  exactly  correct  to 
say  that  the  theory  of  development  by  natural  selection 
or  survival  of  the  fittest  is  extended  Malthusianism,  for 
the  doctrine  of  Malthus  did  not  originally  and  does  not 
necessarily  involve  the  idea  of  progression.  But  this  was 
soon  added  to  it.  McCulloch*  attributes  to  the  ''prin- 
ciple of  increase"  social  improvement  and  the  progress 
of  the  arts,  and  declares  that  the  poverty  that  it  engen- 
ders acts  as  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the  development  of 
industry,  the  extension  of  science  and  the  accumulation 
of  wealth  by  the  upper  and  middle  classes,  without  which 
stimulus  society  would  quickly  sink  into  apathy  and  de- 
cay. What  is  this  but  the  recognition  in  regard  to 
human  society  of  the  developing  effects  of  the  "struggle 
for  existence"  and  "survival  of  the  fittest,"  which  we 
are  now  told  on  the  authority  of  natural  science  have 
been  the  means  which  Nature  has  employed  to  bring 
forth  all  the  infinitely  diversified  and  wonderfully 
adapted  forms  which  the  teeming  life  of  the  globe  as- 
sumes? What  is  it  but  the  recognition  of  the  force, 
which,  seemingly  cruel  and  remorseless,  has  yet  in  the 
course  of  unnumbered  ages  developed  the  higher  from 
the  lower  type,  differentiated  the  man  and  the  monkey, 
and  made  the  Nineteenth  Century  succeed  the  age  of 
stone? 

Thus  commended  and  seemingly  proved,  thus  linked 
and  buttressed,  the  Malthusian  theory — the  doctrine 
that  poverty  is  due  to  the  pressure  of  population  against 
subsistence,  or,  to  put  it  in  its  other  form,  the  doctrine 
that  the  tendency  to  increase  in  the  number  of  laborers 
must  always  tend  to  reduce  wages  to  the  minimum  on 
which  laborers  can  reproduce — is  now  generally  accepted 
as  an  unquestionable  truth,  in  the  light  of  which  social 
phenomena  are  to  be   explained,  just  as  for  ages  the 

•Note  IV.  to  Wealth  of  Nations. 


103  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  U. 

phenomena  of  the  sidereal  heavens  were  explained  upon 
the  supposition  of  the  fixity  of  the  earth,  or  the  facts  of 
geology  upon  that  of  the  literal  inspiration  of  the  Mosaic 
record.  If  authority  were  alone  to  be  considered,  for- 
mally to  deny  this  doctrine  would  require  almost  as  much 
audacity  as  that  of  the  colored  preacher  who  recently 
started  out  on  a  crusade  against  the  opinion  that  the 
earth  moves  around  the  sun,  for  in  one  form  or  another, 
the  Malthusian  doctrine  has  received  in  the  intellectual 
world  an  almost  universal  indorsement,  and  in  the  best 
as  in  the  most  common  literature  of  the  day  may  be  seen 
cropping  out  in  every  direction.  It  is  indorsed  by 
economists  and  by  statesmen,  by  historians  and  by 
natural  investigators;  by  social  science  congresses  and 
by  trade  unions;  by  churchmen  and  by  materialists;  by 
conservatives  of  the  strictest  sect  and  by  the  most  radical 
of  radicals.  It  is  held  and  habitually  reasoned  from  by 
many  who  never  heard  of  Malthus  and  who  have  not  the 
slightest  idea  of  what  his  theory  is. 

Nevertheless,  as  the  grounds  of  the  current  theory  of 
wages  have  vanished  when  subjected  to  a  candid  exami- 
nation, so,  do  I  believe,  will  vanish  the  grounds  of  this, 
its  twin.  In  proving  that  wages  are  not  drawn  from 
capital  we  have  raised  this  Antaeus  from  the  earth. 


CHAPTER  II. 

INFERENCES  FEOM   FACTS. 

The  general  acceptance  of  the  Malthusian  theory  and 
the  high  authority  by  which  it  is  indorsed  have  seemed 
to  me  to  make  it  expedient  to  review  its  grounds  and 
the  causes  which  have  conspired  to  give  it  such  a  domi- 
nating influence  in  the  discussion  of  social  questions. 

But  when  we  subject  the  theory  itself  to  the  test  of 
straightforward  analysis,  it  will,  I  think,  be  found  as 
utterly  untenable  as  the  current  theory  of  wages. 

In  the  first  place,  the  facts  which  are  marshaled  in 
support  of  this  theory  do  not  prove  it,  and  the  analogies 
do  not  countenance  it. 

And  in  the  second  place,  there  are  facts  which  con- 
clusively disprove  it. 

I  go  to  the  heart  of  the  matter  in  saying  that  there  is 
no  warrant,  either  in  experience  or  analogy,  for  the  as- 
sumption that  there  is  any  tendency  in  population  to 
increase  faster  than  subsistence.  The  facts  cited  to  show 
this  simply  show  that  where,  owing  to  the  sparseness  of 
population,  as  in  new  countries,  or  where,  owing  to  the 
unequal  distribution  of  wealth,  as  among  the  poorer 
classes  in  old  countries,  human  life  is  occupied  with  the 
physical  necessities  of  existence,  the  tendency  to  repro- 
duce is  at  a  rate  which  would,  were  it  to  go  on  un- 
checked, some  time  exceed  subsistence.  But  it  is  not  a 
legitimate  inference  from  this  that  the  tendency  to  re- 
produce would  show  itself  in  the  same  force  where  popu- 


104  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  II. 

lation  was  sufficiently  dense  and  wealth  distributed  with 
sufficient  evenness  to  lift  a  whole  community  above  the 
necessity  of  devoting  their  energies  to  a  struggle  for  mere 
existence.  Nor  can  it  be  assumed  that  the  tendency  to 
reproduce,  by  causing  poverty,  must  prevent  the  exist- 
ence of  such  a  community;  for  this,  manifestly,  would 
be  assuming  the  very  point  at  issue,  and  reasoning  in  a 
circle.  And  even  if  it  be  admitted  that  the  tendency  to 
multiply  must  ultimately  produce  poverty,  it  cannot 
from  this  alone  be  predicated  of  existing  poverty  that  it 
is  due  to  this  cause,  until  it  be  shown  that  there  are  no 
other  causes  which  can  account  for  it — a  thing  in  the 
present  state  of  government,  laws,  and  customs,  mani- 
festly impossible. 

This  is  abundantly  shown  in  the  "Essay  on  Popula- 
tion" itself.  This  famous  book,  which  is  much  oftener 
spoken  of  than  read,  is  still  well  worth  perusal,  if  only 
as  a  literary  curiosity.  The  contrast  between  the  merits 
of  the  book  itself  and  the  effect  it  has  produced,  or  is  at 
least  credited  with  (for  though  Sir  James  Stewart,  Mr. 
Townsend,  and  others,  share  with  Malthus  the  glory  of 
discovering  "the  principle  of  population,"  it  was  the 
publication  of  the  "Essay  on  Population"  that  brought 
it  prominently  forward),  is,  it  seems  to  me,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  things  in  the  history  of  literature;  and 
it  is  easy  to  understand  how  Godwin,  whose  "Political 
Justice"  provoked  the  "Essay  on  Population,"  should 
until  his  old  age  have  disdained  a  reply.  It  begins  with 
the  assumption  that  population  tends  to  increase  in  a 
geometrical  ratio,  while  subsistence  can  at  best  be  made 
to  increase  only  in  an  arithmetical  ratio — an  assumption 
just  as  valid,  and  no  more  so,  than  it  would  be,  from  the 
fact  that  a  puppy  doubled  the  length  of  his  tail  while  he 
added  so  many  pounds  to  his  weight,  to  assert  a  geomet- 
ric progression  of  tail  and  an  arithmetical  progression 
of  weight.    And,  the  inference  from  the  assumption  is 


Chap,  a  INFEEENCES  FROM  FACTS.  105 

just  such  as  Swift  in  satire  might  have  credited  to  the 
savans  of  a  previously  dogless  island,  who,  by  bringing 
these  two  ratios  together,  might  deduce  the  very  "strik- 
ing consequence"  that  by  the  time  the  dog  grew  to  a 
weight  of  fifty  pounds  his  tail  would  be  over  a  mile  long, 
and  extremely  difficult  to  wag,  and  hence  recommend 
the  prudential  check  of  a  bandage  as  the  only  alterna- 
tive to  the  positive  check  of  constant  amputations. 
Commencing  with  such  an  absurdity,  the  essay  includes 
a  long  argument  for  the  imposition  of  a  duty  on  the  im- 
portation, and  the  payment  of  a  bounty  for  the  exporta- 
tion of  corn,  an  idea  that  has  long  since  been  sent  to  the 
limbo  of  exploded  fallacies.  And  it  is  marked  through- 
out the  argumentative  portions  by  passages  which  show 
on  the  part  of  the  reverend  gentleman  the  most  ridicu- 
lous incapacity  for  logical  thought — as,  for  instance, 
that  if  wages  were  to  be  increased  from  eighteen  pence 
or  two  shillings  per  day  to  five  shillings,  meat  would 
necessarily  increase  in  price  from  eight  or  nine  pence  to 
two  or  three  shillings  per  pound,  and  the  condition  of 
the  laboring  classes  would  therefore  not  be  improved,  a 
statement  to  which  I  can  think  of  no  parallel  so  close  as 
a  proposition  I  once  heard  a  certain  printer  gravely  ad- 
vance— that  because  an  author,  whom  he  had  known, 
was  forty  years  old  when  he  was  twenty,  the  author  must 
now  be  eighty  years  old  because  he  (the  printer)  was 
forty.  This  confusion  of  thought  does  not  merely  crop 
out  here  and  there;  it  characterizes  the  whole  work.* 

♦Malthus' other  works,  though  written  after  he  became  famous, 
made  no  mark,  and  are  treated  with  contempt  even  by  those  who 
find  in  the  Essay  a  great  discovery.  The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 
for  instance,  though  fully  accepting  the  Malthusian  theory,  says  of 
Mai  thus'  Political  Economy:  "It  is  very  ill  arranged,  and  is  in  no 
respect  either  a  practical  or  a  scientific  exposition  of  the  subject.  It 
is  in  great  part  occupied  with  an  examination  of  parts  of  Mr. 
Eicardo's  peculiar  doctrines,  and  with  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  and 


106  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  JI 

The  main  body  of  the  book  is  taken  up  with  what  is  in 
reality  a  refutation  of  the  theory  which  the  book  ad- 
vances, for  Malthus'  review  of  what  he  calls  the  positive 
checks  to  population  is  simply  the  showing  that  the  re- 
sults which  he  attributes  to  over -population  actually 
arise  from  other  causes.  Of  all  the  cases  cited,  and 
pretty  much  the  whole  globe  is  passed  over  in  the  survey, 
in  which  vice  and  misery  check  increase  by  limiting  mar- 
riages or  shortening  the  term  of  human  life,  there  is  not 
a  single  case  in  which  the  vice  and  misery  can  be  traced 
to  an  actual  increase  in  the  number  of  mouths  over  the 
power  of  the  accompanying  hands  to  feed  them;  but  in 
every  case  the  vice  and  misery  are  shown  to  spring  either 
from  unsocial  ignorance  and  rapacity,  or  from  bad  gov- 
ernment, unjust  laws  or  destructive  warfare. 

Nor  what  Malthus  failed  to  show  has  any  one  since 
him  shown.  The  globe  may  be  surveyed  and  history 
may  be  reviewed  in  vain  for  any  instance  of  a  considera- 
ble country*  in  which  poverty  and  want  can  be  fairly 
attributed  to  the  pressure  of  an  increasing  population. 
Whatever  be  the  possible  dangers  involved  in  the  power 
of  human  increase,  they  have  never  yet  appeared.  What- 
ever may  some  time  be,  this  never  yet  has  been  the  evil 
that  has  afflicted  mankind.     Population  always  tending 

causes  of  value.  Nothing,  however,  can  be  more  unsatisfactory  than 
these  discussions.  In  truth  Mr.  Malthus  never  had  any  clear  or 
accurate  perception  of  Mr.  Ricardo's  theories,  or  of  the  principles 
which  determine  the  value  in  exchange  of  different  articles." 

*  I  say  considerable  country,  because  there  may  be  small  islands, 
such  as  Pitcairn's  Island,  cut  off  from  communication  with  the  rest 
of  the  world  and  consequently  from  the  exchanges  which  are  nec- 
essary to  the  improved  modes  of  production  resorted  to  as  population 
becomes  dense,  which  may  seem  to  offer  examples  in  point.  A 
moment's  reflection,  however,  will  show  that  these  exceptional  cases 
are  not  in  point. 


Chap.  II.  INFEKENCES  FKOM   FACTS.  107 

to  overpass  the  limit  of  subsistence!  How  is  it,  then, 
that  this  globe  of  ours,  after  all  the  thoHsands,  and  it  is 
now  thought  millions,  of  years  that  man  has  been  upon 
the  earth,  is  yet  so  thinly  populated?  How  is  it,  then, 
that  so  many  of  the  hives  of  human  life  are  now  deserted 
— that  once  cultivated  fields  are  rank  with  jungle,  and 
the  wild  beast  licks  her  cubs  where  once  were  busy 
haunts  of  men? 

It  is  a  fact,  that,  as  we  count  our  increasing  millions, 
Ave  are  apt  to  lose  sight  of — nevertheless  it  is  a  fact — that 
in  what  we  know  of  the  world's  history  decadence  of 
population  is  as  common  as  increase.  Whether  the 
aggregate  population  of  the  earth  is  now  greater  than  at 
any  previous  epoch  is  a  speculation  which  can  deal  only 
with  guesses.  Since  Montesquieu,  in  the  early  part  of 
the  last  century,  asserted,  what  was  then  probably  the 
prevailing  impression,  that  the  population  of  the  earth 
had,  since  the  Christian  era,  greatly  declined,  opinion 
has  run  the  other  way.  But  the  tendency  of  recent  in- 
vestigation and  exploration  has  been  to  give  greater 
credit  to  what  have  been  deemed  the  exaggerated  accounts 
of  ancient  historians  and  travelers,  and  to  reveal  indica- 
tions of  denser  populations  and  more  advanced  civiliza- 
tions than  had  before  been  suspected,  as  well  as  of  a 
higher  antiquity  in  the  human  race.  And  in  basing  our 
estimates  of  population  upon  the  development  of  trade, 
the  advance  of  the  arts,  and  the  size  of  cities,  we  are  apt 
to  underrate  the  density  of  population  which  the  inten- 
sive cultivations,  characteristic  of  the  earlier  civiliza- 
tions, are  capable  of  maintaining — especially  where  irri- 
gation is  resorted  to.  As  we  may  see  from  the  closely 
cultivated  districts  of  China  and  Europe  a  very  great 
population  of  simple  habits  can  readily  exist  with  very 
little  commerce  and  a  much  lower  stage  of  those  arts  in 
which  modern  progress  has  been  most  marked,  and  with- 


108  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  IL 

out  that  tendency  to  concentrate  in  cities  which  modern 
populations  show.* 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  only  continent  which  we  can  be 
sure  now  contains  a  larger  population  than  ever  before  is 
Europe.  But  this  is  not  true  of  all  parts  of  Europe. 
Certainly  Greece,  the  Mediterranean  Islands,  and  Turkey 
in  Europe,  probably  Italy,  and  possibly  Spain,  have  con- 
tained larger  populations  than  now,  and  this  may  be 
likewise  true  of  NorthweBtern  and  parts  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Europe. 

America  also  has  increased  in  population  during  the 
time  we  know  of  it;  but  this  increase  is  not  so  great  as  is 
popularly  supposed,  some  estimates  giving  to  Peru  alone 
at  the  time  of  the  discovery  a  greater  population  than 
now  exists  on  the  whole  continent  of  South  America. 
And  all  the  indications  are  that  previous  to  the  discovery 
the  population  of  America  had  been  declining.  "What 
great  nations  have  run  their  course,  what  empires  have 
arisen  and  fallen  in  "that  new  world  which  is  the  old," 
we  can  only  imagine.  But  fragments  of  massive  ruins  yet 
attest  a  grander  pre-Incan  civilization;  amid  the  tropical 
forests  of  Yucatan  and  Central  America  are  the  remains  of 
great  cities  forgotten  ere  the  Spanish  conquest;  Mexico,  as 
Cortez  found  it,  showed  the  superimposition  of  barbarism 
upon  a  higher  social  development,  while  through  a  great 

*  As  may  be  seen  from  the  map  in  H.  H.  Bancroft's  "Native 
Races,"  the  State  of  Vera  Cruz  is  not  one  of  those  parts  of  Mexico 
noticeable  for  its  antiquities.  Yet  Hugo  Fink,  of  Cordova,  writing 
to  the  Smithsonian  Institute  (Reports  1870),  says  there  is  hardly  a 
foot  in  the  whole  State  in  which  by  excavation  either  a  broken 
obsidian  knife  or  a  broken  piece  of  pottery  is  not  found;  that  the 
whole  country  is  intersected  with  parallel  lines  of  stones  intended  to 
keep  the  earth  from  washing  away  in  the  rainy  season,  which  show 
that  even  the  very  poorest  land  was  put  into  requisition,  and  that  it 
is  impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  the  ancient  population 
was  at  least  as  dense  as  it  is  at  present  in  the  most  populous  districts 
of  Europe. 


Chap.n.  INPERENCES  FROM  FACTS.  109 

part  of  what  is  now  the  United  States  are  scattered 
mounds  which  prove  a  once  relatively  dense  population, 
and  here  and  there,  as  in  the  Lake  Superior  copper 
mines,  are  traces  of  higher  arts  than  were  known  to  the 
Indians  with  whom  the  whites  came  in  contact. 

As  to  Africa  there  can  be  no  question.  Northern  Af- 
rica can  contain  but  a  fraction  of  the  population  that 
it  had  in  ancient  times;  the  Nile  Valley  once  held  an  enor- 
mously greater  population  than  now,  while  south  of  the 
Sahara  there  is  nothing  to  show  increase  within  historic 
times,  and  widespread  depopulation  was  certainly  caused 
by  the  slave  trade. 

As  for  Asia,  which  even  now  contains  more  than  half 
the  human  race,  though  it  is  not  much  more  than  half 
as  densely  populated  as  Europe,  there  are  indications 
that  both  India  and  China  once  contained  larger  popula- 
tions than  now,  while  that  great  breeding  ground  of  men 
from  which  issued  swarms  that  overran  both  countries 
and  sent  great  waves  of  people  rolling  upon  Europe, 
must  have  been  once  far  more  populous.  But  the  most 
marked  change  is  in  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  Babylonia, 
Persia,  and  in  short  that  vast  district  which  yielded  to 
the  conquering  arms  of  Alexander.  Where  were  once 
great  cities  and  teeming  populations  are  now  squalid 
villages  and  barren  wastes. 

It  is  somewhat  strange  that  among  all  the  theories 
that  have  been  raised,  that  of  a  fixed  quantity  to  human 
life  on  this  earth  has  not  been  broached.  It  would  at 
least  better  accord  with  historical  facts  than  that  of  the 
constant  tendency  of  population  to  outrun  subsistence. 
It  is  clear  that  population  has  here  ebbed  and  there 
flowed;  its  centers  have  changed;  new  nations  have 
arisen  and  old  nations  declined;  sparsely  settled  districts 
have  become  populous  and  populous  districts  have  lost 
their  population;  but  as  far  back  as  we  can  go  without 
abandoning  ourselves  wholly  to  inference,  there  is  noth- 


HO  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  n. 

ing  to  show  continuous  Increase,  or  even  clearly  to 
show  an  aggregate  increase  from  time  to  time.  The 
advance  of  the  pioneers  of  peoples  has,  so  far  as  we  can 
discern,  never  been  into  uninhabited  lands — their  march 
has  always  been  a  battle  with  some  other  people  pre- 
viously in  possession;  behind  dim  empires  vaguer  ghosts 
of  empire  loom.  That  the  population  of  the  world  must 
have  had  its  small  beginnings  we  confidently  infer,  for 
we  know  that  there  was  a  geologic  era  when  human  life 
could  not  have  existed,  and  we  cannot  believe  that  men 
sprang  up  all  at  once,  as  from  the  dragon  teeth  sowed  by 
Cadmus;  yet  through  long  vistas,  where  history,  tradi- 
tion and  antiquities  shed  a  light  that  is  lost  in  faint  glim- 
mers, we  may  discern  large  populations.  And  during 
these  long  periods  the  principle  of  population  has  not 
been  strong  enough  fully  to  settle  the  world,  or  even  so 
far  as  we  can  clearly  see  materially  to  increase  its  aggre- 
gate population.  Compared  with  its  capacities  to  sup- 
port human  life  the  earth  as  a  whole  is  yet  most  sparsely 
populated. 

There  is  another  broad,  general  fact  which  cannot  fail 
to  strike  any  one  who,  thinking  of  this  subject,  extends 
his  view  beyond  modern  society.  Malthusianism  pred- 
icates a  universal  law — that  the  natural  tendency  of  popu- 
lation is  to  outrun  subsistence.  If  there  be  such  a  law, 
it  must,  wherever  population  has  attained  a  certain 
density,  become  as  obvious  as  any  of  the  great  natural 
laws  which  have  been  everywhere  recognized.  How  is 
it,  then,  that  neither  in  classical  creeds  and  codes,  nor  in 
those  of  the  Jews,  the  Egyptians,  the  Hindoos,  the 
Chinese,  nor  any  of  the  peoples  who  have  lived  in  close 
association  and  have  built  up  creeds  and  codes,  do  we 
find  any  injunctions  to  the  practice  of  the  prudential 
restraints  of  Malthus;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  the  wis- 
dom of  the  centuries,  the  religions  of  the  world,  have 
always  inculcated  ideas  of  civic  and  religious  duty  the 


Chap.n.  INFERENCES  FROM  FACTS.  Ill 

very  reverse  of  those  which  the  current  political  econ- 
omy enjoins,  and  which  Annie  Besant  is  now  trying  to 
popularize  in  England? 

And  it  must  be  remembered  that  there  have  been 
societies  in  which  the  community  guaranteed  to  every 
member  employment  and  subsistence.  John  Stuart  Mill 
says  (Book  II,  Chap.  XII,  Sec.  2),  that  to  do  this  with- 
out state  regulation  of  marriages  and  births,  would  be  to 
produce  a  state  of  general  misery  and  degradation. 
"These  consequences,"  he  says,  "have  been  so  often  and 
so  clearly  pointed  out  by  authors  of  reputation  that 
ignorance  of  them  on  the  part  of  educated  persons  is  no 
longer  pardonable."  Yet  in  Sparta,  in  Peru,  in  Para- 
guay, as  in  the  industrial  communities  which  appear 
almost  everywhere  to  have  constituted  the  primitive 
agricultural  organization,  there  seems  to  have  been  an 
utter  ignorance  of  these  dire  consequences  of  a  natural 
tendency. 

Besides  the  broad,  general  facts  I  have  cited,  there  are 
facts  of  common  knowledge  which  seem  utterly  inconsist- 
ent with  such  an  overpowering  tendency  to  multiplica- 
tion. If  the  tendency  to  reproduce  be  so  strong  as  Mal- 
thusianism  supposes,  how  is  it  that  families  so  often  be- 
come extinct — families  in  which  want  is  unknown?  How 
is  it,  then,  that  when  every  premium  is  offered  by  heredi- 
tary titles  and  hereditary  possessions,  not  alone  to  the 
principle  of  increase,  but  to  the  preservation  of  genea- 
logical knowledge  and  the  proving  up  of  descent,  that 
in  such  an  aristocracy  as  that  of  England,  so  many  peer- 
ages should  lapse,  and  the  House  of  Lords  be  kept  up 
from  century  to  century  only  by  fresh  creations? 

For  the  solitary  example  of  a  family  that  has  survived 
any  great  lapse  of  time,  even  though  assured  of  subsist- 
ence and  honor,  we  must  go  to  unchangeable  China. 
The  descendants  of  Confucius  still  exist  there,  and  enjoy 
peculiar  privileges  and  consideration,  forming,  in  fact. 


113  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  D. 

the  only  hereditary  aristocracy.  On  the  presumption 
that  population  tends  to  double  every  twenty -five  years, 
they  should,  in  2,150  years  after  the  death  of  Confucius, 
have  amounted  to  859,559,193,106,709,670,198,710,528 
souls.  Instead  of  any  such  unimaginable  number,  the  de- 
scendants of  Confucius,  2,150  years  after  his  death,  in  the 
reign  of  Kanghi,  numbered  11,000  males,  or  say  22,000 
souls.  This  is  quite  a  discrepancy,  and  is  the  more  strik- 
ing when  it  is  remembered  that  the  esteem  in  which  this 
family  is  held  on  account  of  their  ancestor,  "the  Most 
Holy  Ancient  Teacher,*'  has  prevented  the  operation  of 
the  positive  check,  while  the  maxims  of  Confucius  incul- 
cate anything  but  the  prudential  check. 

Yet,  it  may  be  said,  that  even  this  increase  is  a  great 
one.  Twenty-two  thousand  persons  descended  from  a 
single  pair  in  2,150  years  is  far  short  of  the  Malthusian 
rate.  Nevertheless,  it  is  suggestive  of  possible  over- 
crowding. 

But  consider.  Increase  of  descendants  does  not  show 
increase  of  population.  It  could  only  do  this  when  the 
breeding  was  in  and  in.  Smith  and  his  wife  have  a  son 
and  daughter,  who  marry  respectively  some  one  else's 
daughter  and  son,  and  each  have  two  children.  Smith 
and  his  wife  would  thus  have  four  grandchildren;  but 
there  would  be  in  the  one  generation  no  greater  number 
than  in  the  other — each  child  would  have  four  grand- 
parents. And  supposing  this  process  were  to  go  on,  the 
line  of  descent  might  constantly  spread  out  into  hun- 
dreds, thousands  and  millions;  but  in  each  generation  of 
descendants  there  would  be  no  more  individuals  than  in 
any  previous  generation  of  ancestors.  The  web  of  gener- 
ations is  like  lattice-work  or  the  diagonal  threads  in 
cloth.  Commencing  at  any  point  at  the  top,  the  eye  fol- 
lows lines  which  at  the  bottom  widely  diverge;  but  be- 
ginning at  any  point  at  the  bottom,  the  lines  diverge  in 
the  same  way  to  the  top.     How  many  children  a  man 


Chap.U.  IKPEKENCES  FBOM  PACTS.  113 

may  have  is  problematical.  But  that  he  had  two  parents 
is  certain,  and  that  these  again  had  two  parents  each 
is  also  certain.  Follow  this  geometrical  progression 
through  a  few  generations  and  see  if  it  does  not  lead  to 
quite  as  "striking  consequences"  as  Mr.  Malthus'  peo- 
pling of  the  solar  systems. 

But  from  such  considerations  as  these  let  us  advance 
to  a  more  definite  inquiry.  I  assert  that  the  cases  com- 
monly cited  as  instances  of  over-population  will  not  bear 
investigation.  India,  China,  and  Ireland  furnish  the 
strongest  of  these  cases.  In  each  of  these  countries, 
large  numbers  have  perished  by  starvation  and  large 
classes  are  reduced  to  abject  misery  or  compelled  to 
emigrate.     But  is  this  really  due  to  over-population? 

Comparing  total  population  with  total  area,  India  and 
China  are  far  from  being  the  most  densely  populated 
countries  of  the  world.  According  to  the  estimates  of 
MM.  Behm  and  Wagner,  the  population  of  India  is  but 
133  to  the  square  mile  and  that  of  China  119,  whereas 
Saxony  has  a  population  of  442  to  the  square  mile;  Bel- 
gium 441;  England  422;  the  Netherlands  291;  Italy  234 
and  Japan  233.*  There  are  thus  in  both  countries  large 
areas  unused  or  not  fully  used,  but  even  in  their  more 
densely  populated  districts  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
either  could  maintain  a  much  greater  population  in  a 
much  higher  degree  of  comfort,  for  in  both  countries  is 
labor  applied  to  production  in  the  rudest  and  most  in- 
efficient ways,  and  in  both  countries  great  natural  re- 
sources are  wholly  neglected.     This  arises  from  no  innate 

•I  take  these  figures  from  the  Smithsonian  Beport  for  1878, 
leaving  out  decimals.  MM.  Behm  and  Wagner  put  the  population 
of  China  at  446,500,000,  though  there  are  some  who  contend  that  It 
does  not  exceed  150,000,000.  They  put  the  population  of  Hither 
India  at  206,225,580,  giving  132.29  to  the  square  mile;  of  Ceylon  at 
2,405,287  or  97.36  to  the  square  mile;  of  Further  India  at  21,018,062, 
or  27.94  to  the  square  mile.  They  estimate  the  population  of  the 
world  at  1,877,000,000,  an  average  of  26.64  to  the  square  mile. 


Hi  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  IL 

deficiency  in  the  people,  for  the  Hindoo,  as  comparative 
philology  has  shown,  is  of  our  own  blood,  and  China  pos- 
sessed a  high  degree  of  civilization  and  the  rudiments  of 
the  most  important  modern  inventions  when  our  ances- 
tors were  wandering  savages.  It  arises  from  the  form 
which  the  social  organization  has  in  both  countries  taken, 
which  has  shackled  productive  power  and  robbed  indus- 
try of  its  reward. 

In  India  from  time  immemorial,  the  working  classes 
have  been  ground  down  by  exactions  and  oppressions  into 
a  condition  of  helpless  and  hopeless  degradation.  For 
ages  and  ages  the  cultivator  of  the  soil  has  esteemed 
himself  happy  if,  of  his  produce,  the  extortion  of  the 
strong  hand  left  him  enough  to  support  life  and  furnish 
seed;  capital  could  nowhere  be  safely  accumulated  or  to 
any  considerable  extent  be  used  to  assist  production;  all 
wealth  that  could  be  wrung  from  the  people  was  in  the 
possession  of  princes  who  were  little  better  than  robber 
chiefs  quartered  on  the  country,  or  in  that  of  their 
farmers  or  favorites,  and  was  wasted  in  useless  or  worse 
than  useless  luxury,  while  religion,  sunken  into  an  elab- 
orate and  terrible  superstition,  tyrannized  over  the  mind 
as  physical  force  did  over  the  bodies  of  men.  Under 
these  conditions,  the  only  arts  that  could  advance  were 
those  that  ministered  to  the  ostentation  and  luxury  of 
the  great.  The  elephants  of  the  rajah  blazed  with  gold 
of  exquisite  workmanship,  and  the  umbrellas  that  sym- 
bolized his  regal  power  glittered  with  gems;  but  the  plow 
of  the  ryot  was  only  a  sharpened  stick.  The  ladies  of 
the  rajah's  harem  wrapped  themselves  in  muslins  so  fine 
as  to  take  the  name  of  woven  wind,  but  the  tools  of  the 
artisan  were  of  the  poorest  and  rudest  description,  and 
commerce  could  only  be  carried  on,  as  it  were,  by  stealth. 

Is  it  not  clear  that  this  tyranny  and  insecurity  have 
produced  the  want  and  starvation  of  India;  and  not,  as 
according  to  Buckle,  the  pressure  of  population  upon 


Chap.lL  INFERENCES  FROM  FACTS.  115 

subsistence  that  has  produced  the  want,  and  the  want  the 
tyranny.*  Says  the  Rev.  William  Tennant,  a  chaplain 
in  the  service  of  the  East  India  Company,  writing  in 
1796,  two  years  before  the  publication  of  the  "Essay  on 
Population:" 

"When  we  reflect  upon  the  great  fertility  of  Hindostan,  it  Is 
amazing  to  consider  the  frequency  of  famine.  It  is  evidently  not 
owing  to  any  sterility  of  soil  or  climate;  the  evil  must  be  traced  to 
some  political  cause,  and  it  requires  but  little  penetration  to  discover 
it  in  the  avarice  and  extortion  of  the  various  governments.  The 
great  spur  to  industry,  that  of  security,  is  taken  away.  Hence  no 
man  raises  more  grain  than  is  barely  sufficient  for  himself,  and  the 
first  unfavorable  season  produces  a  famine. 

"  The  Mogul  government  at  no  period  offered  full  security  to  the 
prince,  still  less  to  his  vassals;  and  to  peasants  the  most  scanty  pro- 
tection of  all.  It  was  a  continued  tissue  of  violence  and  insurrection, 
treachery  and  punishment,  under  which  neither  commerce  nor  the 
arts  could  prosper,  nor  agriculture  assume  the  appearance  of  a  sys- 
tem. Its  downfall  gave  rise  to  a  state  still  more  afflictive,  since 
anarchy  is  worse  than  misrule.  The  Mohammedan  government, 
wretched  as  it  was,  the  European  nations  have  not  the  merit  of  over- 
turning. It  fell  beneath  the  weight  of  its  own  corruption,  and  had 
already  been  succeeded  by  the  multifarious  tyranny  of  petty  chiefs, 
whose  right  to  govern  consisted  in  their  treason  to  the  state,  and 
whose  exactions  on  the  peasants  were  as  boundless  as  their  avarice. 
The  rents  to  government  were,  and,  where  natives  rule,  still  are, 
levied  twice  a  year  by  a  merciless  banditti,  under  the  semblance  of 
an  army,  who  wantonly  destroy  or  carry  off  whatever  part  of  the 
produce  may  satisfy  their  caprice  or  satiate  their  avidity,  after  having 
hunted  the  ill-fated  peasants  from  the  villages  to  the  woods.  Any 
attempt  of  the  peasants  to  defend  their  persons  or  property  within 
the  mud  walls  of  their  villages  only  calls  for  the  more  signal  venge- 
ance on  those  useful,  but  ill-fated  mortals.      They  are  then  sur- 

*  History  of  Civilization.  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  2.  In  this  chapter 
Buckle  has  collected  a  great  deal  of  evidence  of  the  oppression  and 
degradation  of  the  people  of  India  from  the  most  remote  times,  a 
condition  which,  blinded  by  the  Malthusian  doctrine,  he  has  accepted 
and  made  the  cornerstone  of  his  theory  of  the  development  of  civili- 
zation, he  attributes  to  the  ease  with  which  food  can  there  be  pro- 
duced. 


116  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Booh  m 

rounded  and  attacked  with  musketry  and  field  pieces  till  resistance 
ceases,  when  the  survivors  are  sold,  and  their  habitations  burned  and 
leveled  with  the  ground.  Hence  you  will  frequently  meet  with  the 
ryots  gathering  up  the  scattered  remnants  of  what  had  yesterday 
been  their  habitation,  if  fear  has  permitted  them  to  return;  but 
oftener  the  ruins  are  seen  smoking,  after  a  second  visitation  of  this 
kind,  without  the  appearance  of  a  human  being  to  interrupt  the 
awful  silence  of  desolation.  This  description  does  not  apply  to  the 
Mohammedan  chieftains  alone;  it  is  equally  applicable  to  the  Rajahs 
in  the  districts  governed  by  Hindoos."  * 

To  this  merciless  rapacity,  which  would  have  produced 
want  and  famine  were  the  population  but  one  to  a 
square  mile  and  the  land  a  Garden  of  Eden,  succeeded, 
in  the  first  era  of  British  rule  in  India,  as  merciless  a 
rapacity,  backed  by  a  far  more  irresistible  power.  Says 
Macaulay,  in  his  essay  on  Lord  Clive: 

"  Enormous  fortunes  were  rapidly  accumulated  at  Calcutta,  while 
millions  of  human  beings  were  reduced  to  the  extremity  of  wretched- 
ness. They  had  been  accustomed  to  live  under  tyranny,  but  never 
under  tyranny  like  this.  They  found  the  little  finger  of  the  Com- 
pany thicker  than  the  loins  of  Surajah  Dowlah.  *  *  *  It  resembled 
the  government  of  evil  genii,  rather  than  the  government  of  human 
tyrants.  Sometimes  they  submitted  in  patient  misery.  Sometimes 
they  fled  from  the  white  man  as  their  fathers  had  been  used  to  fly 
from  the  Maharatta,  and  the  palanquin  of  the  English  traveler  was 
often  carried  through  silent  villages  and  towns  that  the  report  of  his 
approach  had  made  desolate." 

Upon  horrors  that  Macaulay  thus  but  touches,  the 
vivid  eloquence  of  Burke  throws  a  stronger  light — whole 
districts  surrendered  to  the  unrestrained  cupidity  of  the 
worst  of  human  kind,  poverty-stricken  peasants  fiend- 
ishly tortured  to  compel  them  to  give  up  their  little 
hoards,  and  once  populous  tracts  turned  into  deserts. 

But  the  lawless  license  of  early  English  rule  has  been 
long  restrained.     To  all  that  vast  population  the  strong 

•Indian  Recreations.  By  Rev.  Wm.  Tennant.  London,  1804, 
Vol.  I.,  Sec.  XXXIX. 


chap.n.  inperiIkces  from  facts.  117 

hand  of  England  has  given  a  more  than  Eoman  peace; 
the  just  principles  of  English  law  have  been  extended 
by  an  elaborate  system  of  codes  and  law  officers  designed 
to  secure  to  the  humblest  of  these  abject  peoples  the 
rights  of  Anglo-Saxon  freemen;  the  whole  peninsula  has 
been  intersected  by  railways,  and  great  irrigation  works 
have  been  constructed.  Yet,  with  increasing  frequency, 
famine  has  succeeded  famine,  raging  with  greater 
intensity  over  wider  areas. 

Is  not  this  a  demonstration  of  the  Malthusian  theory? 
Does  it  not  show  that  no  matter  how  much  the  possibili- 
ties of  subsistence  are  increased,  population  still  con- 
tinues to  press  upon  it?  Does  it  not  show,  as  Malthus 
contended,  that,  to  shut  up  the  sluices  by  which  super- 
abundant population  is  carried  off,  is  but  to  compel 
nature  to  open  new  ones,  and  that  unless  the  sources  of 
human  increase  are  checked  by  prudential  regulation, 
the  alternative  of  war  is  famine?  This  has  been  the 
orthodox  explanation.  But  the  truth,  as  may  be  seen  in 
the  facts  brought  forth  in  recent  discussions  of  Indian 
affairs  in  the  English  periodicals,  is  that  these  famines, 
which  have  been,  and  are  now,  sweeping  away  their  mil- 
lions, are  no  more  due  to  the  pressure  of  population  upon 
the  natural  limits  of  subsistence  than  was  the  desolation 
of  the  Oarnatic  when  Hyder  All's  horsemen  burst  upon  it 
in  a  whirlwind  of  destruction. 

The  millions  of  India  have  bowed  their  necks  beneath 
the  yokes  of  many  conquerors,  but  worst  of  all  is  the 
steady,  grinding  weight  of  English  domination — a  weight 
which  is  literally  crushing  millions  out  of  existence,  and, 
as  shown  by  English  writers,  is  inevitably  tending  to  a 
most  frightful  and  widespread  catastrophe.  Other  con- 
querors have  lived  in  the  land,  and,  though  bad  and 
tyrannous  in  their  rule,  have  understood  and  been  un- 
derstood by  the  people;  but  India  now  is  like  a  great 
estate  owned  by  an  absentee  and  alien  landlord.     A  most 


1181  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  H 

expensive  military  and  civil  establishment  is  kept  up, 
managed  and  officered  by  Englishmen  who  regard  India 
as  but  a  place  of  temporary  exile;  and  an  enormous  sum, 
estimated  as  at  least  £20,000,000  annually,  raised  from  a 
population  where  laborers  are  in  many  places  glad  in 
good  times  to  work  for  l^d.  to  4d.  a  day,  is  drained 
away  to  England  in  the  shape  of  remittances,  pensions, 
home  charges  of  the  government,  etc. — a  tribute  for 
which  there  is  no  return.  The  immense  sums  lavished 
on  railroads  have,  as  shown  by  the  returns,  been  econom- 
ically unproductive;  the  great  irrigation  works  are  for 
the  most  part  costly  failures.  In  large  parts  of  India 
the  English,  in  their  desire  to  create  a  class  of  landed 
proprietors,  turned  over  the  soil  in  absolute  possession  to 
hereditary  tax-gatherers,  who  rack-rent  the  cultivators 
most  mercilessly.  In  other  parts,  where  the  rent  is  still 
taken  by  the  State  in  the  shape  of  a  land  tax,  assessments 
are  so  high,  and  taxes  are  collected  so  relentlessly,  as  to 
drive  the  ryots,  who  get  but  the  most  scanty  living  in 
good  seasons,  into  the  claws  of  money  lenders,  who  are, 
if  possible,  even  more  rapacious  than  the  zemindars. 
Upon  salt,  an  article  of  prime  necessity  everywhere,  and 
of  especial  necessity  where  food  is  almost  exclusively 
vegetable,  a  tax  of  nearly  twelve  hundred  per  cent,  is 
imposed,  so  that  its  various  industrial  uses  are  prohib- 
ited, and  large  bodies  of  the  people  cannot  get  enough  to 
keep  either  themselves  or  their  cattle  in  health.  Below 
the  English  officials  are  a  horde  of  native  employees  who 
oppress  and  extort.  The  effect  of  English  law,  with  its 
rigid  rules,  and,  to  the  native,  mysterious  proceedings, 
has  been  but  to  put  a  potent  instrument  of  plunder  into 
the  hands  of  the  native  money  lenders,  from  whom  the 
peasants  are  compelled  to  borrow  on  the  most  extrava- 
gant terms  to  meet  their  taxes,  and  to  whom  they  are 
easily  induced  to  give  obligations  of  which  they  know 
not  the  meaning.     **We  do  not  care  for  the  people  of 


Chap.n.  IITFERENCES  PROM  FACTS.  119 

India,"  writes  Florence  Nightingale,  with  what  seems 
like  a  sob.  *'The  saddest  sight  to  be  seen  in  the  East- 
nay,  probably  in  the  world — is  the  peasant  of  our  East- 
ern Empire."  And  she  goes  on  to  show  the  causes  of 
the  terrible  famines,  in  taxation  which  takes  from  the 
cultivators  the  very  means  of  cultivation,  and  the  actual 
slavery  to  which  the  ryots  are  reduced  as  "the  conse- 
quences of  our  own  laws;"  producing  in  "the  most  fer- 
tile country  in  the  world,  a  grinding,  chronic  semi-star- 
vation in  many  places  where  what  is  called  famine  does 
not  exist."  *  "The  famines  which  have  been  devastating 
India,"  says  H.  M.  Hyndman,f  "are  in  the  main  finan- 
cial famines.  Men  and  women  cannot  get  food,  because 
they  cannot  save  the  money  to  buy  it.  Yet  we  are 
driven,  so  we  say,  to  tax  these  people  more."  And  he 
shows  how,  even  from  famine  stricken  districts,  food  is 
exported  in  payment  of  taxes,  and  how  the  whole  of 
India  is  subjected  to  a  steady  and  exhausting  drain, 
which,  combined  with  the  enormous  expenses  of  govern- 
ment, is  making  the  population  year  by  year  poorer. 
The  exports  of  India  consist  almost  exclusively  of  agri- 
cultural products.  For  at  least  one-third  of  these,  as 
Mr.  Hyndman   shows,  no  return  whatever  is  received; 

*  Miss  Nightingale  (The  People  of  India,  in  "  Nineteenth  Century" 
for  August,  1878)  gives  instances,  which  she  says  represent  millions 
of  cases,  of  the  state  of  peonage  to  which  the  cultivators  of  Southern 
India  have  been  reduced  through  the  facilities  afforded  by  the  Civil 
Courts  to  the  frauds  and  oppressions  of  money  lenders  and  minor 
native  officials.  "  Our  Civil  Courts  are  regarded  as  institutions  for 
enabling  the  rich  to  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor,  and  many  are  fain 
to  seek  a  refuge  from  their  jurisdiction  within  native  territory,"  says 
Sir  David  Wedderburn,  in  an  article  on  Protected  Princes  in  India, 
in  a  previous  (July)  number  of  the  same  magazine,  in  which  he  also 
gives  a  native  State,  where  taxation  is  comparatively  light,  as  an 
instance  of  the  most  prosperous  population  of  India. 

fSee  articles  in  "Nineteenth  Century  "for  October,  1878,  and 
March,  1879. 


120  POPULATIOIT  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Booh  B. 

they  represent  tribute — remittances  made  by  English- 
men in  India,  or  expenses  of  the  English  branch  of  the 
Indian  government.*  And  for  the  rest,  the  return  is  for 
the  most  part  government  stores,  or  articles  of  comfort 
and  luxury  used  by  the  English  masters  of  India.  He 
shows  that  the  expenses  of  government  have  been  enor- 
mously increased  under  Imperial  rule;  that  the  relentless 
taxation  of  a  population  so  miserably  poor  that  the 
masses  are  not  more  than  half  fed,  is  robbing  them  of 
their  scanty  means  for  cultivating  the  soil;  that  the 
number  of  bullocks  (the  Indian  draft  animal)  is  decreas- 
ing, and  the  scanty  implements  of  culture  being  given  up 
to  money  lenders,  from  whom  *'we,  a  business  people,  are 
forcing  the  cultivators  to  borrow  at  12,24,  60  per  cent,  f 
to  build  and  pay  the  interest  on  the  cost  of  vast  public 
works,  which  have  never  paid  nearly  five  per  cent.'* 
Says  Mr.  Hyndman:  "The  truth  is  that  Indian  society 
as  a  whole  has  been  frightfully  impoverished  under  our 
rule,  and  that  the  process  is  now  going  on  at  an  exceed- 
ingly rapid  rate" — a  statement  which  cannot  be  doubted, 
in  view  of  the  facts  presented  not  only  by  such  writers 
as  I  have  referred  to,  but  by  Indian  officials  themselves. 
The  very  efforts  made  by  the  government  to  alleviate 
famines  do,  by  the  increased  taxation  imposed,  but  in- 
tensify and  extend  their  real  cause.  Although  in  the 
recent  famine  in  Southern  India  six  millions  of  people, 
it  is  estimated,  perished  of  actual  starvation,  and  the 
great  mass  of  those  who  survived  were  actually  stripped, 

*  Prof.  Fawcett,  in  a  recent  article  on  the  Proposed  Loans  to  India, 
calls  attentions  to  such  items  as  £1,200  for  outfit  and  passage  of  a 
member  of  the  Governor  General's  Council;  £3,450  for  outfit  and 
passage  of  Bishops  of  Calcutta  and  Bombay. 

f  Florence  Nightingale  says  100  per  cent,  is  common,  and  even 
then  the  cultivator  is  robbed  in  ways  which  she  illustrates.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  these  rates,  like  those  of  the  pawnbroker, 
are  not  interest  in  the  economic  sense  of  the  term. 


Chap.  11.  INFERENCES  FROH  FACTS.  131 

yet  the  taxes  were  not  remitted  and  the  salt  tax,  already 
prohibitory  to  the  great  bulk  of  these  poverty  stricken 
people,  was  increased  forty  percent.,  just  as  after  the  ter- 
rible Bengal  famine  in  1770  the  revenue  was  actually 
driven  up,  by  raising  assessments  upon  the  survivors  and 
rigorously  enforcing  collection. 

In  India  now,  as  in  India  in  past  times,  it  is  only  the 
most  superficial  view  that  can  attribute  want  and  starva- 
tion to  pressure  of  population  upon  the  ability  of  the 
land  to  produce  subsistence.  Could  the  cultivators 
retain  their  little  capital — could  they  be  released  from 
the  drain  which,  even  in  non-famine  years,  reduces  great 
masses  of  them  to  a  scale  of  living  not  merely  below 
what  is  deemed  necessary  for  the  sepoys,  but  what  Eng- 
lish humanity  gives  to  the  prisoners  in  the  jails — reviv- 
ing •  industry,  assuming  more  productive  forms,  would 
undoubtedly  suffice  to  keep  a  much  greater  population. 
There  are  still  in  India  great  areas  uncultivated,  vast 
mineral  resources  untouched,  and  it  is  certain  that  the 
population  of  India  does  not  reach,  as  within  historical 
times  it  never  has  reached,  the  real  limit  of  the  soil  to 
furnish  subsistence,  or  even  the  point  where  this  power 
begins  to  decline  with  the  increasing  drafts  made  upon 
it.  The  real  cause  of  want  in  India  has  been,  and  yet  is, 
the  rapacity  of  man,  not  the  niggardliness  of  nature. 

What  is  true  of  India  is  true  of  China.  Densely  popu- 
lated as  China  is  in  many  parts,  that  the  extreme  poverty 
of  the  lower  classes  is  to  be  attributed  to  causes  similar 
to  those  which  have  operated  in  India,  and  not  to  too 
great  population,  is  shown  by  many  facts.  Insecurity 
prevails,  production  goes  on  under  the  greatest  disad- 
vantages, and  exchange  is  closely  fettered.  Where  the 
government  is  a  succession  of  squeezings,  and  security 
for  capital  of  any  sort  must  be  purchased  of  a  mandarin; 
where  men's  shoulders  are  the  great  reliance  for  inland 
transportation;  where  the  junk  is  obliged  to  be  con- 


123  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  IL 

structed  so  as  to  unfit  it  for  a  sea-boat;  where  piracy  is  a 
regular  trade,  and  robbers  often  march  in  regiments, 
poverty  would  prevail  and  the  failure  of  a  crop  result  in 
famine,  no  matter  how  sparse  the  population.*  That 
China  is  capable  of  supporting  a  much  greater  population 
is  shown  not  only  by  the  great  extent  of  uncultivated  land 
to  which  all  travelers  testify,  but  by  the  immense  un- 
worked  mineral  deposits  which  are  there  known  to  exist. 
China,  for  instance,  is  said  to  contain  the  largest  and 
finest  deposit  of  coal  yet  anywhere  discovered.  How 
much  the  working  of  these  coal  beds  would  add  to  the 
ability  to  support  a  greater  population,  may  readily  be 
imagined.  Coal  is  not  food,  it  is  true;  but  its  production 
is  equivalent  to  the  production  of  food.  For,  not  only 
may  coal  be  exchanged  for  food,  as  is  done  in  all  mining 
districts,  but  the  force  evolved  by  its  consumption  may 
be  used  in  the  production  of  food,  or  may  set  labor  free 
for  the  production  of  food. 

Neither  in  India  nor  China,  therefore,  can  poverty  and 
starvation  be  charged  to  the  pressure  of  population 
against  subsistence.  It  is  not  dense  population,  but  the 
causes  which  prevent  social  organization  from  taking  its 
natural  development  and  labor  from  securing  its  full 
return,  that  keep  millions  just  on  the  verge  of  starva- 
tion, and  every  now  and  again  force  millions  beyond  it. 
That  the  Hindoo  laborer  thinks  himself  fortunate  to  get 
a  handful  of  rice,  that  the  Chinese  eat  rats  and  puppies, 
is  no  more  due  to  the  pressure  of  population  than  it  is 
due  to  the  pressure  of  population  that  the  Digger  Indians 
live  on  grasshoppers,  or  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of 
Australia  eat  the  worms  found  in  rotten  wood. 

Let  me  be  understood.  I  do  not  mean  merely  to  say 
that  India  or  China  could,  with  a  more  highly  developed 

*  The  seat  of  recent  famine  in  China  was  not  the  most  thickly 
settled  districts; 


Chap.n.  IITFERENCES  FROM  FACTS.  123 

civilization,  maintain  a  greater  population,  for  to  this 
any  Malthusian  would  agree.  The  Malthusian  doctrine 
does  not  deny  that  an  advance  in  the  productive  arts 
would  permit  a  greater  population  to  find  suhsistence. 
But  the  Malthusian  theory  affirms — and  this  is  its  essence 
— that,  whatever  be  the  capacity  for  production,  the 
natural  tendency  of  population  is  to  come  up  with  it, 
and,  in  the  endeavor  to  press  beyond  it,  to  produce,  to 
use  the  phrase  of  Malthus,  that  degree  of  vice  and  misery 
which  is  necessary  to  prevent  further  increase;  so  that  as 
productive  power  is  increased,  population  will  corre- 
spondingly increase,  and  in  a  little  time  produce  the 
same  results  as  before.  What  I  say  is  this:  that  nowhere 
is  there  any  instance  which  will  support  this  theory; 
that  nowhere  can  want  be  properly  attributed  to  the 
pressure  of  population  against  the  power  to  procure  sub- 
sistence in  the  then  existing  degree  of  human  knowledge; 
that  everywhere  the  vice  and  misery  attributed  to  over- 
population can  be  traced  to  the  warfare,  tyranny,  and 
oppression  which  prevent  knowledge  from  being  utilized 
and  deny  the  security  essential  to  production.  The  rea- 
son why  the  natural  increase  of  population  does  not  pro- 
duce want,  we  shall  come  to  hereafter.  The  fact  that  it 
has  not  yet  anywhere  done  so,  is  what  we  are  now  con- 
cerned with.  This  fact  is  obvious  with  regard  to  India 
and  China.  It  will  be  obvious,  too,  wherever  we  trace 
to  their  causes  the  results  which  on  superficial  view  are 
often  taken  to  proceed  from  over-population. 

Ireland,  of  all  European  countries,  furnishes  the  great 
stock  example  of  over-population.  The  extreme  poverty 
of  the  peasantry  and  the  low  rate  of  wages  there  prevail- 
ing, the  Irish  famine,  and  Irish  emigration,  are  con- 
stantly referred  to  as  a  demonstration  of  the  Malthusian 
theory  worked  out  under  the  eyes  of  the  civilized  world. 
I  doubt  if  a  more  striking  instance  can  be  cited  of  the 
power  of  a  preaccepted  theory  to  blind  men  as  to  the 


124  POPTTLATIOIT  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  IL 

true  relations  of  facts.  The  truth  is,  and  it  lies  on  the 
surface,  that  Ireland  has  never  yet  had  a  population 
which  the  natural  powers  of  the  country,  in  the  existing 
state  of  the  productive  arts,  could  not  have  maintained 
in  ample  comfort.  At  the  period  of  her  greatest  popu- 
lation (1840-45)  Ireland  contained  something  over  eight 
millions  of  people.  But  a  very  large  proportion  of  them 
managed  merely  to  exist — lodging  in  miserable  cabins, 
clothed  with  miserable  rags,  and  with  but  potatoes  for 
their  staple  food.  When  the  potato  blight  came,  they 
died  by  thousands.  But  was  it  the  inability  of  the  soil 
to  support  so  large  a  population  that  compelled  so  many 
to  live  in  this  miserable  way,  and  exposed  them  to  starva- 
tion on  the  failure  of  a  single  root  crop?  On  the  con- 
trary, it  was  the  same  remorseless  rapacity  that  robbed 
the  Indian  ryot  of  the  fruits  of  his  toil  and  left  him  to 
starve  where  nature  offered  plenty.  A  merciless  banditti 
of  tax-gatherers  did  nob  march  through  the  land  plunder- 
ing and  torturing,  but  the  laborer  was  just  as  effectually 
stripped  by  as  merciless  a  horde  of  landlords,  among 
whom  the  soil  had  been  divided  as  their  absolute  posses- 
sion, regardless  of  any  rights  of  those  who  lived  upon  it. 
Consider  the  conditions  of  production  under  which 
this  eight  millions  managed  to  live  until  the  potato 
blight  came.  It  was  a  condition  to  which  the  words 
used  by  Mr.  Tennant  in  reference  to  India  may  as  appro- 
priately be  applied — "the  great  spur  to  industry,  that  of 
security,  was  taken  away."  Cultivation  was  for  the 
most  part  carried  on  by  tenants  at  will,  who,  even  if  the 
rack-rents  which  they  were  forced  to  pay  had  permitted 
them,  did  not  dare  to  make  improvements  which  would 
have  been  but  the  signal  for  an  increase  of  rent.  Labor 
was  thus  applied  in  the  most  inefficient  and  wasteful 
manner,  and  labor  was  dissipated  in  aimless  idleness 
that,  with  any  security  for  its  fruits,  would  have  been 
applied  unremittingly.    But  even  under  these  condi- 


Chap.n.  rNTEREKCES  FROM  FACTS.  125 

tions,  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  Ireland  did  more  than 
support  eight  millions.  For  when  her  population  was  at 
its  highest,  Ireland  was  a  food-exporting  country.  Even 
during  the  famine,  grain  and  meat  and  butter  and  cheese 
were  carted  for  exportation  along  roads  lined  with  the 
starving  and  past  trenches  into  which  the  dead  were 
piled.  For  these  exports  of  food,  or  at  least  for  a  great 
part  of  them,  there  was  no  return.  So  far  as  the  people 
of  Ireland  were  concerned,  the  food  thus  exported  might 
as  well  have  been  burned  up  or  thrown  into  the  sea,  or 
never  produced.  It  went  not  as  an  exchange,  but  as  a 
tribute — to  pay  the  rent  of  absentee  landlords;  a  levy 
wrung  from  producers  by  those  who  in  no  wise  con- 
tributed to  production. 

Had  this  food  been  left  to  those  who  raised  it;  had  the 
cultivators  of  the  soil  been  permitted  to  retain  and  use 
the  capital  their  labor  produced;  had  security  stimulated 
industry  and  permitted  the  adoption  of  economical 
methods,  there  would  have  been  enough  to  support  in 
bounteous  comfort  the  largest  population  Ireland  ever 
had,  and  the  potato  blight  might  have  come  and  gone 
without  stinting  a  single  human  being  of  a  full  meal. 
For  it  was  not  the  imprudence  "of  Irish  peasants,"  as 
English  economists  coldly  say,  which  induced  them  to 
make  the  potato  the  staple  of  their  food.  Irish  emi- 
grants, when  they  can  get  other  things,  do  not  live  upon 
the  potato,  and  certainly  in  the  United  States  the  pru- 
dence of  the  Irish  character,  in  endeavoring  to  lay  by 
something  for  a  rainy  day,  is  remarkable.  They  lived  on 
the  potato,  because  rack-rents  stripped  everything  else 
from  them.  The  truth  is,  that  the  poverty  and  misery 
of  Ireland  have  never  been  fairly  attributable  to  over- 
population. 

McCulloch,  writing  in  1838,  says,  in  Note  IV  ta 
"Wealth  of  Nations:" 


136  POPULATIOKT  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  n. 

"  The  wonderful  density  of  population  in  Ireland  is  the  immediate 
cause  of  the  abject  poverty  and  depressed  condition  of  the  great 
hulk  of  the  people.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  there  are  at 
present  more  than  double  the  persons  in  Ireland  it  is,  with  its  exist- 
ing means  of  production,  able  either  fully  to  employ  or  to  maintain 
in  a  moderate  state  of  comfort." 

As  in  1841  the  population  of  Ireland  was  given  as 
8,175,124,  we  may  set  it  down  in  1838  as  about  eight 
millions.  Thus,  to  change  McCulloch's  negative  into  an 
affirmative,  Ireland  would,  according  to  the  over-popu- 
lation theory,  have  been  able  to  employ  fully  and  main- 
tain in  a  moderate  state  of  comfort  something  less  than 
four  million  persons.  Now,  in  the  early  part  of  the  pre- 
ceding century,  when  Dean  Swift  wrote  his  "Modest 
Proposal,"  the  population  of  Ireland  was  about  two  mil- 
lions. As  neither  the  means  nor  the  arts  of  production 
had  perceptibly  advanced  in  Ireland  during  the  interval, 
then — if  the  abject  poverty  aud  depressed  condition  of 
the  Irish  people  in  1838  were  attributable  to  over-popula- 
tion— there  should,  upon  McCulloch's  own  admission, 
have  been  in  Ireland  in  1727  more  than  full  employment, 
and  much  more  than  a  moderate  state  of  comfort,  for 
the  whole  two  millions.  Yet,  instead  of  this  being  the 
case,  the  abject  poverty  and  depressed  condition  of  the 
Irish  people  in  1727  were  such,  that,  with  burning,  blis- 
tering irony.  Dean  Swift  proposed  to  relieve  surplus 
population  by  cultivating  a  taste  for  roasted  babies,  and 
bringing  yearly  to  the  shambles,  as  dainty  food  for  the 
rich,  100,000  Irish  infants! 

It  is  difficult  for  one  who  has  been  looking  over  the 
literature  of  Irish  misery,  as  while  writing  this  chapter  I 
have  been  doing,  to  speak  in  decorous  terms  of  the  com- 
placent attribution  of  Irish  want  and  suffering  to  over- 
population which  are  to  be  found  even  in  the  works  of 
such  high-minded  men  as  Mill  and  Buckle.  I  know  of 
nothing  better  calculated  to  make  the  blood  boil  than 


Chap.n.  IN'FERENCES  FROM  FACTS.  137 

the  cold  accounts  of  the  grasping,  grinding  tyranny  to 
which  the  Irish  people  have  been  subjected,  and  to 
which,  and  not  to  any  inability  of  the  land  to  support  its 
population,  Irish  pauperism  and  Irish  famine  are  to  be 
attributed;  and  were  it  not  for  the  enervating  effect 
which  the  history  of  the  world  proves  to  be  everywhere 
the  result  of  abject  poverty,  it  would  be  difficult  to  resist 
something  like  a  feeling  of  contempt  for  a  race  who, 
stung  by  such  wrongs,  have  only  occasionally  murdered 
a  landlord! 

Whether  over-population  ever  did  cause  pauperism  and 
starvation,  may  be  an  open  question;  but  the  pauperism 
and  starvation  of  Ireland  can  no  more  be  attributed  to 
this  cause  than  can  the  slave  trade  be  attributed  to  the 
over-population  of  Africa,  or  the  destruction  of  Jerusa- 
lem to  the  inability  of  subsistence  to  keep  pace  with 
reproduction.  Had  Ireland  been  by  nature  a  grove  of 
bananas  and  bread-fruit,  had  her  coasts  been  lined  by  the 
guano-deposits  of  the  Chinchas,  and  the  sun  of  lower 
latitudes  warmed  into  more  abundant  life  her  moist  soil, 
the  social  conditions  that  have  prevailed  there  would 
still  have  brought  forth  poverty  and  starvation.  How 
could  there  fail  to  be  pauperism  and  famine  in  a  country 
where  rack-rents  wrested  from  the  cultivator  of  the  soil 
all  the  produce  of  his  labor  except  just  enough  to  main- 
tain life  in  good  seasons;  where  tenure  at  will  forbade 
improvements  and  removed  incentive  to  any  but  the  most 
wasteful  and  poverty-stricken  culture;  where  the  tenant 
dared  not  accumulate  capital,  even  if  he  could  get  it,  for 
fear  the  landlord  would  demand  it  in  the  rent;  where  in 
fact  he  was  an  abject  slave,  who,  at  the  nod  of  a  human 
being  like  himself,  might  at  any  time  be  driven  from  his 
miserable  mud  cabin,  a  houseless,  homeless,  starving 
wanderer,  forbidden  even  to  pluck  the  spontaneous  fruits 
of  the  earth,  or  to  trap  a  wild  hare  to  satisfy  his  hunger? 
No  matter  how  sparse  the  population,  no  matter  what 


128  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Booh  IL 

the  natural  resources,  are  not  pauperism  and  starvation 
necessary  consequences  in  a  land  where  the  producers  of 
wealth  are  compelled  to  work  under  conditions  which 
deprive  them  of  hope,  of  self-respect,  of  energy,  of  thrift; 
where  absentee  landlords  drain  away  without  return  at 
least  a  fourth  of  the  net  produce  of  the  soil,  and  when, 
besides  them,  a  starving  industry  must  support  resident 
landlords,  with  their  horses  and  hounds,  agents,  jobbers, 
middlemen  and  bailiffs,  an  alien  state  church  to  insult 
religious  prejudices,  and  an  army  of  policemen  and  sol- 
diers to  overawe  and  hunt  down  any  opposition  to  the 
iniquitous  system?  Is  it  not  impiety  far  worse  than 
atheism  to  charge  upon  natural  laws  misery  so  caused  ? 

What  is  true  in  these  three  cases  will  be  found  upon 
examination  true  of  all  cases.  So  far  as  our  knowl- 
edge of  facts  goes,  we  may  safely  deny  that  the  in- 
crease of  population  has  ever  yet  pressed  upon  subsist- 
ence in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  vice  and  misery;  that 
increase  of  numbers  has  ever  yet  decreased  the  relative 
production  of  food.  The  famines  of  India,  China,  and 
Ireland  can  no  more  be  credited  to  over-population  than 
the  famines  of  sparsely  populated  Brazil.  The  vice  and 
misery  that  come  of  want  can  no  more  be  attributed 
to  the  niggardliness  of  Nature  than  can  the  six  mil- 
lions slain  by  the  sword  of  Genghis  Khan,  Tamerlane's 
pyramid  of  skulls,  or  the  extermination  of  the  ancient 
Britons  or  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the  West 
Indies. 


CHAPTER  in. 

INFEREKCES  FROM  ANALOG'S; 

If  we  turn  from  an  examination  of  the  facts  "brought 
forward  in  illustration  of  the  Malthusian  theory  to  con- 
sider the  analogies  by  which  it  is  supported,  we  shall  find 
the  same  inconclusiveness. 

The  strength  of  the  reproductive  force  in  the  animal 
and  vegetable  kingdoms — such  facts  as  that  a  single  pair 
of  salmon  might,  if  preserved  from  their  natural  enemies 
for  a  few  years,  fill  the  ocean;  that  a  pair  of  rabbits 
would,  under  the  same  circumstances,  soon  overrun  a 
continent;  that  many  plants  scatter  their  seeds  by  the 
hundred  fold,  and  some  insects  deposit  thousands  of 
eggs;  and  that  everywhere  through  these  kingdoms  each 
species  constantly  tends  to  press,  and  when  not  limited 
by  the  number  of  its  enemies,  evidently  does  press, 
against  the  limits  of  subsistence — is  constantly  cited, 
from  Malthus  down  to  the  text-books  of  the  present  day, 
as  showing  that  population  likewise  tends  to  press  against 
subsistence,  and,  when  unrestrained  by  other  means,  its 
natural  increase  must  necessarily  result  in  such  low 
wages  and  want,  or,  if  that  will  not  suflBce,  and  the  in- 
crease still  goes  on,  in  such  actual  starvation,  as  will 
keep  it  within  the  limits  of  subsistence. 

But  is  this  analogy  valid?  It  is  from  the  vegetable 
and  animal  kingdoms  that  man's  food  is  drawn,  and 
hence  the  greater  strength  of  the  reproductive  force  in 
the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms  than  in  man  simply 
proves  the  power  of  subsistence  to  increase  faster  than 


130  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Boole  II 

population.  Does  not  the  fact  that  all  of  the  things 
which  furnish  man's  subsistence  have  the  power  to  multi- 
ply many  fold — some  of  them  many  thousand  fold,  and 
some  of  them  many  million  or  even  billion  fold — while 
he  is  only  doubling  his  numbers,  show  that,  let  human 
beings  increase  to  the  full  extent  of  their  reproductive 
power,  the  increase  of  population  can  never  exceed  sub- 
sistence? This  is  clear  when  it  is  remembered  that 
though  in  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms  each 
species,  by  virtue  of  its  reproductive  power,  naturally 
and  necessarily  presses  against  the  conditions  which  limit 
its  further  increase,  yet  these  conditions  are  nowhere 
fixed  and  final.  No  species  reaches  the  ultimate  limit  of 
soil,  water,  air,  and  sunshine;  but  the  actual  limit  of 
each  is  in  the  existence  of  other  species,  its  rivals,  its 
enemies,  or  its  food.  Thus  the  conditions  which  limit 
the  existence  of  such  of  these  species  as  afford  him  sub- 
sistence man  can  extend  (in  some  cases  his  mere  appear- 
ance will  extend  them),  and  thus  the  reproductive  forces 
of  the  species  which  supply  his  wants,  instead  of  wasting 
themselves  against  their  former  limit,  start  forward  in 
his  service  at  a  pace  which  his  powers  of  increase  can- 
not rival.  If  he  but  shoot  hawks,  food-birds  will  in- 
crease, if  he  but  trap  foxes  the  wild  rabbits  will  multiply; 
the  honey  bee  moves  with  the  pioneer,  and  on  the  or- 
ganic matter  with  which  man's  presence  fills  the  rivers, 
fishes  feed. 

Even  if  any  consideration  of  final  causes  be  excluded; 
even  if  it  be  not  permitted  to  suggest  that  the  high  and 
constant  reproductive  force  in  vegetables  and  animals 
has  been  ordered  to  enable  them  to  subserve  the  uses  of 
man,  and  that  therefore  the  pressure  of  the  lower  forms 
of  life  against  subsistence  does  not  tend  to  show  that  it 
must  likewise  be  so  with  man,  "the  roof  and  crown  of 
things;"  yet  there  still  remains  a  distinction  between 
man  and  all  other  forms  of  life  that  destroys  the  analogy. 


Chap.ni.  IKFERENCES   FROM  ANALOGY.  131 

Of  all  living  things,  man  is  the  only  one  who  can  give 
play  to  the  reproductive  forces,  more  powerful  than  his 
own,  which  supply  him  with  food.  Beast,  insect,  bird, 
and  fish  take  only  what  they  find.  Their  increase  is  at 
the  expense  of  their  food,  and  when  they  have  reached 
the  existing  limits  of  food,  their  food  must  increase  be- 
fore they  can  increase.  But  unlike  that  of  any  other 
living  thing,  the  increase  of  man  involves  the  increase  of 
his  food.  If  bears  instead  of  men  had  been  shipped 
from  Europe  to  the  North  American  continent,  there 
would  now  be  no  more  bears  than  in  the  time  of  Colum- 
bus, and  possibly  fewer,  for  bear  food  would  not  have 
been  increased  nor  the  conditions  of  bear  life  extended, 
by  the  bear  immigration,  but  probably  the  reverse.  But 
within  the  limits  of  the  United  States  alone,  there  are 
now  forty-five  millions  of  men  where  then  there  were 
only  a  few  hundred  thousand,  and  yet  there  is  now  within 
that  territory  much  more  food  per  capita  for  the  forty- 
five  millions  than  there  was  then  for  the  few  hundred 
thousand.  It  is  not  the  increase  of  food  that  has  caused 
this  increase  of  men;  but  the  increase  of  men  that  has 
brought  about  the  increase  of  food.  There  is  more  food, 
simply  because  there  are  more  men. 

Here  is  a  difference  between  the  animal  and  the  man. 
Both  the  jay-hawk  and  the  man  eat  chickens,  but  the 
more  jay-hawks  the  fewer  chickens,  while  the  more  men 
the  more  chickens.  Both  the  seal  and  the  man  eat 
salmon,  but  when  a  seal  takes  a  salmon  there  is  a  salmon 
the  less,  and  were  seals  to  increase  past  a  certain  point 
salmon  must  diminish;  while  by  placing  the  spawn  of  the 
salmon  under  favorable  conditions  man  can  so  increase 
the  number  of  salmon  as  more  than  to  make  up  for  all  he 
may  take,  and  thus,  no  matter  how  much  men  may  in- 
crease, their  increase  need  never  outrun  the  supply  of 
salmon. 

In  short,  while  all  through  the  vegetable  and  animal 


133  POPULATION   AND   SUBSISTENCE,  Book  U 

kingdoms  the  limit  of  subsistence  is  independent  of  the 
thing  subsisted,  with  man  the  limit  of  subsistence  is, 
within  the  final  limits  of  earth,  air,  water,  and  sunshine, 
dependent  upon  man  himself.  And  this  being  the  case, 
the  analogy  which  it  is  sought  to  draw  between  the  lower 
forms  of  life  and  man  manifestly  fails.  While  vegetables 
and  animals  do  press  against  the  limits  of  subsistence, 
man  cannot  press  against  the  limits  of  his  subsistence 
until  the  limits  of  the  globe  are  reached.  Observe,  this 
is  not  merely  true  of  the  whole,  but  of  all  the  parts.  As 
we  cannot  reduce  the  level  of  the  smallest  bay  or  harbor 
without  reducing  the  level  not  merely  of  the  ocean  with 
which  it  communicates,  but  of  all  the  seas  and  oceans  of 
the  world,  so  the  limit  of  subsistence  in  any  particular 
place  is  not  the  physical  limit  of  that  place,  but  the 
physical  limit  of  the  globe.  Fifty  square  miles  of  soil 
will  in  the  present  state  of  the  productive  arts  yield  sub- 
sistence for  only  some  thousands  of  people,  but  on  the 
fifty  square  miles  which  comprise  the  city  of  London 
some  three  and  a  half  millions  of  people  are  maintained, 
and  subsistence  increases  as  population  increases.  So  far 
as  the  limit  of  subsistence  is  concerned,  London  may  grow 
to  a  population  of  a  hundred  millions,  or  five  hundred 
millions,  or  a  thousand  millions,  for  she  draws  for  sub- 
sistence upon  the  whole  globe,  and  the  limit  which  sub- 
sistence sets  to  her  growth  in  population  is  the  limit  of 
the  globe  to  furnish  food  for  its  inhabitants. 

But  here  will  arise  another  idea  from  which  the  Mal- 
thusian  theory  derives  great  support — that  of  the  dimin- 
ishing productiveness  of  land.  As  conclusively  proving 
the  law  of  diminishing  productiveness  it  is  said  in  the 
current  treatises  that  were  it  not  true  that  beyond  a  cer- 
tain point  land  yields  less  and  less  to  additional  applica- 
tions of  labor  and  capital,  increasing  population  would 
not  cause  any  extension  of  cultivation,  but  that  all  the 
increased  supplies  needed  could  and  would  be  raised 


Chap.m.  INFERENCES  FROM  ANALOGY.  133 

without  taking  into  cultivation  any  fresh  ground.  As- 
sent to  this  seems  to  involve  assent  to  the  doctrine  that 
the  difficulty  of  obtaining  subsistence  must  increase  with 
increasing  population. 

But  I  think  the  necessity  is  only  in  seeming.  If  the 
proposition  be  analyzed  it  will  be  seen  to  belong  to  a 
class  that  depend  for  validity  upon  an  implied  or  sug- 
gested qualification — a  truth  relatively,  which  taken  ab- 
solutely becomes  a  non-truth.  For  that  man  cannot 
exhaust  or  lessen  the  powers  of  nature  follows  from  the 
indestructibility  of  matter  and  the  persistence  of  force. 
Production  and  consumption  are  only  relative  terms. 
Speaking  absolutely,  man  neither  produces  nor  con- 
sumes. The  whole  human  race,  were  they  to  labor  to 
infinity,  could  not  make  this  rolling  sphere  one  atom 
heavier  or  one  atom  lighter,  could  not  add  to  or  diminish 
by  one  iota  the  sum  of  the  forces  whose  everlasting  cir- 
cling produces  all  motion  and  sustains  all  life.  As  the 
water  that  we  take  from  the  ocean  must  again  return  to 
the  ocean,  so  the  food  we  take  from  the  reservoirs  of 
nature  is,  from  the  moment  we  take  it,  on  its  way  back 
to  those  reservoirs.  What  we  draw  from  a  limited  ex- 
tent of  land  may  temporarily  reduce  the  productiveness 
of  that  land,  because  the  return  may  be  to  other  land,  or 
may  be  divided  between  that  land  and  other  land,  or, 
perhaps,  all  land;  but  this  possibility  lessens  with  in- 
creasing area,  and  ceases  when  the  whole  globe  is  con- 
sidered. That  the  earth  could  maintain  a  thousand  bil- 
lions of  people  as  easily  as  a  thousand  millions  is  a  neces- 
sary deduction  from  the  manifest  truths  that,  at  least  so 
far  as  our  agency  is  concerned,  matter  is  eternal  and 
force  must  forever  continue  to  act.  Life  does  not  use 
up  the  forces  that  maintain  life.  We  come  into  the 
material  universe  bringing  nothing;  we  take  nothing 
away  when  we  depart.  The  human  being,  physically 
considered,  is  but  a  transient  form  of  matter,  a  changing 


Id4  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  11 

mode  of  motion.  The  matter  remains  and  the  force 
persists.  Nothing  is  lessened,  nothing  is  weakened. 
And  from  this  it  follows  that  the  limit  to  the  population 
of  the  globe  can  be  only  the  limit  of  space. 

Now  this  limitation  of  space — this  danger  that  the 
human  race  may  increase  beyond  the  possibility  of  finding 
elbow  room — is  so  far  off  as  to  have  for  us  no  more  prac- 
tical interest  than  the  recurrence  of  the  glacial  period  or 
the  final  extinguishment  of  the  sun.  Yet  remote  and 
shadowy  as  it  is,  it  is  this  possibility  which  gives  to  the 
Malthusian  theory  its  apparently  self-evident  character. 
But  if  we  follow  it,  even  this  shadow  will  disappear. 
It,  also,  springs  from  a  false  analogy.  That  vegetable 
and  animal  life  tend  to  press  against  the  limits  of  space 
does  not  prove  the  same  tendency  in  human  life. 

Granted  that  man  is  only  a  more  highly  developed 
animal;  that  the  ring-tailed  monkey  is  a  distant  relative 
who  has  gradually  developed  acrobatic  tendencies,  and 
the  hump-backed  whale  a  far-off  connection  who  in  early 
life  took  to  the  sea — granted  that  back  of  these  he  is  kin 
to  the  vegetable,  and  is  still  subject  to  the  same  laws  as 
plants,  fishes,  birds,  and  beasts.  Yet  there  is  still  this 
difference  between  man  and  all  other  animals — he  is  the 
only  animal  whose  desires  increase  as  they  are  fed;  the 
only  animal  that  is  never  satisfied.  The  wants  of  every 
other  living  thing  are  uniform  and  fixed.  The  ox  of  to- 
day aspires  to  no  more  than  did  the  ox  when  man  first 
yoked  him.  The  sea  gull  of  the  English  Channel,  who 
poises  himself  above  the  swift  steamer,  wants  no  better 
food  or  lodging  than  the  gulls  who  circled  round  as  the 
keels  of  Caesar's  galleys  first  grated  on  a  British  beach. 
Of  all  that  nature  offers  them,  be  it  ever  so  abundant,  all 
living  things  save  man  can  take,  and  care  for,  only 
enough  to  supply  wants  which  are  definite  and  fixed. 
The  only  use  they  can  make  of  additional  supplies  or 
additional  opportunities  is  to  multiply. 


Chap.IU.  INFERENCES  FEOM  ANALOGY.  135 

But  not  SO  with  man.  No  sooner  are  his  animal  wantss 
satisfied  than  new  wants  arise.  Food  he  wants  first,  as 
does  the  beast;  shelter  next,  as  does  the  beast;  and  these 
given,  his  reproductive  instincts  assert  their  sway,  as  do 
those  of  the  beast.  But  here  man  and  beast  part  com- 
pany. The  beast  never  goes  further;  the  man  has  but 
set  his  feet  on  the  first  step  of  an  infinite  progression — a 
progression  upon  which  the  beast  never  enters;  a  pro- 
gression away  from  and  above  the  beast. 

The  demand  for  quantity  once  satisfied,  he  seeks 
quality.  The  very  desires  that  he  has  in  common  with 
the  beast  become  extended,  refined,  exalted.  It  is  not 
merely  hunger,  but  taste,  that  seeks  gratification  in  food; 
in  clothes,  he  seeks  not  merely  comfort,  but  adornment; 
the  rude  shelter  becomes  a  house;  the  undiscriminating 
sexual  attraction  begins  to  transmute  itself  into  subtile  in- 
fluences, and  the  hard  and  common  stock  of  animal  life 
to  blossom  and  to  bloom  into  shapes  of  delicate  beauty. 
As  power  to  gratify  his  wants  increases,  so  does  aspira- 
tion grow.  Held  down  to  lower  levels  of  desire,  Lucullus 
will  sup  with  Lucullus;  twelve  boars  turn  on  spits  that 
Antony's  mouthful  of  meat  maybe  done  to  a  turn;  every 
kingdom  of  Nature  be  ransacked  to  add  to  Cleopatra's 
charms,  and  marble  colonnades  and  hanging  gardens  and 
pyramids  that  rival  the  hills  arise.  Passing  into  higher 
forms  of  desire,  that  which  slumbered  in  the  plant  and  fit- 
fully stirred  in  the  beast,  awakes  in  the  man.  The  eyes 
of  the  mind  are  opened,  and  he  longs  to  know.  He 
braves  the  scorching  heat  of  the  desert  and  the  icy  blasts 
of  the  polar  sea,  but  not  for  food;  he  watches  all  night, 
but  it  is  to  trace  the  circling  of  the  eternal  stars.  He 
adds  toil  to  toil,  to  gratify  a  hunger  no  animal  has  felt; 
to  assuage  a  thirst  no  beast  can  know. 

Out  upon  nature,  in  upon  himself,  back  through  the 
mists  that  shroud  the  past,  forward  into  the  darkness 
that  overhangs  the  future,  turns  the  restless  desire  that 


138  POPULATIOIS"  AND  SUBSISTETN'CE.  Book  II 

arises  when  the  animal  wants  slumber  in  satisfaction. 
Beneath  things,  he  seeks  the  law;  he  would  know  how 
the  globe  was  forged  and  the  stars  were  hung,  and  trace 
to  their  origins  the  springs  of  life.  And,  then,  as  the 
man  develops  his  nobler  nature,  there  arises  the  desire 
higher  yet — the  passion  of  passions,  the  hope  of  hopes — 
the  desire  that  he,  even  he,  may  somehow  aid  in  making 
life  better  and  brighter,  in  destroying  want  and  sin,  sor- 
row and  shame.  He  masters  and  curbs  the  animal;  he 
turns  his  back  upon  the  feast  and  renounces  the  place  of 
power;  he  leaves  it  to  others  to  accumulate  wealth,  to 
gratify  pleasant  tastes,  to  bask  themselves  in  the  warm 
sunshine  of  the  brief  day.  He  works  for  those  he  never 
saw  and  never  can  see;  for  a  fame,  or  maybe  but  for  a 
scant  justice,  that  can  only  come  long  after  the  clods 
have  rattled  upon  his  coflfin  lid.  He  toils  in  the  advance, 
where  it  is  cold,  and  there  is  little  cheer  from  men,  and 
the  stones  are  sharp  and  the  brambles  thick.  Amid  the 
scoffs  of  the  present  and  the  sneers  that  stab  like  knives, 
he  builds  for  the  future;  he  cuts  the  trail  that  progress- 
ive humanity  may  hereafter  broaden  into  a  highroad. 
Into  higher,  grander  spheres  desire  mounts  and  beckons, 
and  a  star  that  rises  in  the  east  leads  him  on.  Lo!  the 
pulses  of  the  man  throb  with  the  yearnings  of  the  god — 
he  would  aid  in  the  process  of  the  suns! 

Is  not  the  gulf  too  wide  for  the  analogy  to  span?  Give 
more  food,  open  fuller  conditions  of  life,  and  the  vege- 
table or  animal  can  but  multiply;  the  man  will  develop. 
In  the  one  the  expansive  force  can  but  extend  existence 
in  new  numbers;  in  the  other,  it  will  inevitably  tend  to 
extend  existence  in  higher  forms  and  wider  powers. 
Man  is  an  animal;  but  he  is  an  animal  plus  something 
else.  He  is  the  mythic  earth-tree,  whose  roots  are  in  the 
ground,  but  whose  topmost  branches  may  blossom  in  the 
heavens! 

Whichever  way  it  be  turned,  the  reasoning  by  which 


Chap.m.  INFERENCES  PROM  ANALOGY.  137 

this  theory  of  the  constant  tendency  of  population  to 
press  against  the  limits  of  subsistence  is  supported  shows 
an  unwarranted  assumption,  an  undistributed  middle,  as 
the  logicians  would  say.  Facts  do  not  warrant  it,  anal- 
ogy does  not  countenance  it.  It  is  a  pure  chimera  of 
the  imagination,  such  as  those  that  for  a  long  time  pre- 
vented men  from  recognizing  the  rotundity  and  motion 
of  the  earth.  It  is  just  such  a  theory  as  that  under- 
neath us  everything  not  fastened  to  the  earth  must  fall 
off;  as  that  a  ball  dropped  from  the  mast  of  a  ship  in 
motion  must  fall  behind  the  mast;  as  that  a  live  fish 
placed  in  a  vessel  full  of  water  will  displace  no  water. 
It  is  as  unfounded,  if  not  as  grotesque,  as  an  assumption 
we  can  imagine  Adam  might  have  made  had  he  been  of 
an  arithmetical  turn  of  mind  and  figured  on  the  growth 
of  his  first  baby  from  the  rate  of  its  early  months.  From 
the  fact  that  at  birth  it  weighed  ten  pounds  and  in  eight 
months  thereafter  twenty  pounds,  he  might,  with  the 
arithmetical  knowledge  which  some  sages  have  supposed 
him  to  possess,  have  ciphered  out  a  result  quite  as  strik- 
ing as  that  of  Mr.  Malthus;  namely,  that  by  the  time  it 
got  to  be  ten  years  old  it  would  be  as  heavy  as  an  ox,  at 
twelve  as  heavy  as  an  elephant,  and  at  thirty  would 
weigh  no  less  than  175,716,339,548  tons. 

The  fact  is,  there  is  no  more  reason  for  us  to  trouble 
ourselves  about  the  pressure  of  population  upon  subsist- 
ence than  there  was  for  Adam  to  worry  himself  about  the 
rapid  growth  of  his  baby.  So  far  as  an  inference  is 
really  warranted  by  facts  and  suggested  by  analogy,  it  is 
that  the  law  of  population  includes  such  beautiful  adap- 
tations as  investigation  has  already  shown  in  other 
natural  laws,  and  that  we  are  no  more  warranted  in  as- 
suming that  the  instinct  of  reproduction,  in  the  natural 
development  of  society,  tends  to  produce  misery  and  vice, 
than  we  should  be  in  assuming  that  the  force  of  gravita- 
tion must  hurl  the  moon  to  the  earth  and  the  earth  to  the 


138  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  n. 

sun,  or  than  in  assuming  from  the  contraction  of  water 
with  reductions  of  temperature  down  to  thirty-two 
degrees  that  rivers  and  lakes  must  freeze  to  the  bottom 
with  every  frost,  and  the  temperate  regions  of  earth  be 
thus  rendered  uninhabitable  by  even  moderate  winters. 
That,  besides  the  positive  and  prudential  checks  of  Mal- 
thus,  there  is  a  third  check  which  comes  into  play  with 
the  elevation  of  the  standard  of  comfort  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  intellect,  is  pointed  to  by  many  well-known 
facts.  The  proportion  of  births  is  notoriously  greater  in 
new  settlements,  where  the  struggle  with  nature  leaves 
little  opportunity  for  intellectual  life,  and  among  the 
poverty-bound  classes  of  older  countries,  who  in  the 
midst  of  wealth  are  deprived  of  all  its  advantages  and  re- 
duced to  all  but  an  animal  existence,  than  it  is  among 
the  classes  to  whom  the  increase  of  wealth  has  brought 
independence,  leisure,  comfort,  and  a  fuller  and  moro 
varied  life.  This  fact,  long  ago  recognized  in  the 
homely  adage,  "a  rich  man  for  luck,  and  a  poor  man  for 
children,"  was  noted  by  Adam  Smith,  who  says  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  find  a  poor  half-starved  Highland  woman 
has  been  the  mother  of  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  chil- 
dren, and  is  everywhere  so  clearly  perceptible  that  it  is 
only  necessary  to  allude  to  it. 

If  the  real  law  of  population  is  thus  indicated,  as  I 
think  it  must  be,  then  the  tendency  to  increase,  instead 
of  being  always  uniform,  is  strong  where  a  greater  popu- 
lation would  give  increased  comfort,  and  where  the  per- 
petuity of  the  race  is  threatened  by  the  mortality  in- 
duced by  adverse  conditions;  but  weakens  just  as  the 
higher  development  of  the  individual  becomes  possible 
and  the  perpetuity  of  the  race  is  assured.  In  other 
words,  the  law  of  population  accords  with  and  is  subordi- 
nate to  the  law  of  intellectual  development,  and  any 
danger  that  human  beings  may  be  brought  into  a  world 
where  they  cannot  be  provided  for  arises  not  from  the 


Chap.m.  INFERENCES  FEOM  ANALOGY.  139 

ordinances  of  nature,  but  from  social  mal-adjustments 
that  in  the  midst  of  wealth  condemn  men  to  want.  The 
truth  of  this  will,  I  think,  be  conclusively  demonstrated 
when,  after  having  cleared  the  ground,  we  trace  out  the 
true  laws  of  social  growth.  But  it  would  disturb  the 
natural  order  of  the  argument  to  anticipate  them  now. 
If  I  have  succeeded  in  maintaining  a  negative — in  show- 
ing that  the  Malthusian  theory  is  not  proved  by  the  rea- 
soning by  which  it  is  supported — it  is  enough  for  the 
present.  In  the  next  chapter  I  propose  to  take  the 
aflBrmative  and  show  that  it  is  disproved  by  facts. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

DISPEOOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THBOBT. 

So  deeply  rooted  and  thoroughly  entwined  with  the 
reasonings  of  the  current  political  economy  is  this  doc- 
trine that  increase  of  population  tends  to  reduce  wages 
and  produce  poverty,  so  completely  does  it  harmonize 
with  many  popular  notions,  and  so  liable  is  it  to  recur  in 
different  shapes,  that  I  have  thought  it  necessary  to  meet 
and  show  in  some  detail  the  insuflBciency  of  the  argu- 
ments by  which  it  is  supported,  before  bringing  it  to  the 
test  of  facts;  for  the  general  acceptance  of  this  theory 
adds  a  most  striking  instance  to  the  many  which  the  his- 
tory of  thought  affords  of  how  easily  men  ignore  facts 
when  blindfolded  by  a  preaccepted  theory. 

To  the  supreme  and  final  test  of  facts  we  can  easily 
bring  this  theory.  Manifestly  the  question  whether  in- 
crease of  population  necessarily  tends  to  reduce  wages 
and  cause  want,  is  simply  the  question  whether  it  tends 
to  reduce  the  amount  of  wealth  that  can  be  produced  by 
a  given  amount  of  labor. 

This  is  what  the  current  doctrine  holds.  The  accepted 
theory  is,  that  the  more  that  is  required  from  nature  the 
less  generously  does  she  respond,  so  that  doubling  the 
application  of  labor  will  not  double  the  product;  and 
hence,  increase  of  population  must  tend  to  reduce  wages 
and  deepen  poverty,  or,  in  the  phrase  of  Malthus,  must 
result  in  vice  and  misery.  To  quote  the  language  of 
John  Stuart  Mill: 

"  A  greater  number  of  people  cannot,  in  any  given  state  of  civili- 


Chap.  IV.      DISPBOOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  141 

zation,  be  collectively  so  well  provided  for  aa  a  smaller.  The 
niggardliness  of  nature,  not  the  injustice  of  society,  is  the  cause  of 
the  penalty  attached  to  over-population.  An  unjust  distribution  of 
wealth  does  not  aggravate  the  evil,  but,  at  most,  causes  it  be  some- 
what earlier  felt.  It  is  in  vain  to  say  that  all  mouths  which  the  in- 
crease of  mankind  calls  into  existence  bring  with  them  hands.  The 
new  mouths  require  as  much  food  as  the  old  ones,  and  the  hands  do 
not  produce  as  much.  If  all  instruments  of  production  were  held  in 
joint  property  by  the  whole  people,  and  the  produce  divided  with 
perfect  equality  among  them,  and  if  in  a  society  thus  constituted, 
industry  were  as  energetic  and  the  produce  as  ample  as  at  the  present 
time,  there  would  be  enough  to  make  all  the  existing  population  ex- 
tremely comfortable;  but  when  that  population  had  doubled  itself, 
as,  with  existing  habits  of  the  people,  imder  such  an  encouragement, 
it  undoubtedly  would  in  little  more  than  twenty  years,  what  would 
then  be  their  condition?  Unless  the  arts  of  production  were  in  the 
same  time  improved  in  an  almost  unexampled  degree,  the  inferior 
soils  which  must  be  resorted  to,  and  the  more  laborious  and  scantily 
remunerative  cultivation  which  must  be  employed  on  the  superior 
soils,  to  procure  food  for  so  much  larger  a  population,  would,  by  an 
insuperable  necessity,  render  every  individual  in  the  conununity 
poorer  than  before.  If  the  population  continued  to  increase  at  the 
same  rate,  a  time  would  soon  arrive  when  no  one  would  have  more 
than  mere  necessaries,  and,  soon  after,  a  time  when  no  one  would 
have  a  sufficiency  of  those,  and  the  further  increase  of  population 
would  be  arrested  by  death."  * 

All  this  I  deny.  I  assert  that  the  very  reverse  of  these 
propositions  is  true.  I  assert  that  in  any  given  state  of 
civilization  a  greater  number  of  people  can  collectively 
be  better  provided  for  than  a  smaller.  I  assert  that  the 
injustice  of  society,  not  the  niggardliness  of  nature,  is 
the  cause  of  the  want  and  misery  which  the  current 
theory  attributes  to  over-population.  I  assert  that  the 
new  mouths  which  an  increasing  population  calls  into 
existence  require  no  more  food  than  the  old  ones,  while 
the  hands  they  bring  with  them  can  in  the  natural  order 
of  things  produce  more.  I  assert  that,  other  things  being 
equal,  the  greater  the  population,  the  greater  the  com- 

*  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  Book  I.,  Chap.  XIII.,  Sea  i. 


142  POPULATION"  AND  SFBSISTESTCB.  Book  n. 

fort  which  an  equitable  distribution  of  wealth  would 
give  to  each  individual.  I  assert  that  in  a  state  of 
equality  the  natural  increase  of  population  would  con- 
stantly tend  to  make  every  individual  richer  instead  of 
poorer. 

I  thus  distinctly  join  issue,  and  submit  the  question  to 
the  test  of  facts. 

But  observe  (for  even  at  the  risk  of  repetition  I  wish 
to  warn  the  reader  against  a  confusion  of  thought  that 
is  observable  even  in  writers  of  great  reputation),  that 
the  question  of  fact  into  which  this  issue  resolves  itself  is 
not  in  what  stage  of  population  is  most  subsistence  pro- 
duced? but  in  what  stage  of  population  is  there  exhibited 
the  greatest  power  of  producing  wealth?  For  the  power 
of  producing  wealth  in  any  form  is  the  power  of  produc- 
ing subsistence — and  the  consumption  of  wealth  in  any 
form,  or  of  wealth-producing  power,  is  equivalent  to  the 
consumption  of  subsistence.  I  have,  for  instance,  some 
money  in  my  pocket.  With  it  I  may  buy  either  food  or 
cigars  or  jewelry  or  theater  tickets,  and  just  as  I  expend 
my  money  do  I  determine  labor  to  the  production  of 
food,  of  cigars,  of  jewelry,  or  of  theatrical  representa- 
tions. A  set  of  diamonds  has  a  value  equal  to  so  many 
barrels  of  flour — that  is  to  say,  it  takes  on  the  average  as 
much  labor  to  produce  the  diamonds  as  it  would  to  pro- 
duce so  much  flour.  If  I  load  my  wife  with  diamonds,  it 
is  as  much  an  exertion  of  subsistence-producing  power 
as  though  I  had  devoted  so  much  food  to  purposes  of 
ostentation.  If  I  keep  a  footman,  I  take  a  possible  plow- 
man from  the  plow.  The  breeding  and  maintenance  of 
a  race-horse  require  care  and  labor  which  would  suffice 
for  the  breeding  and  maintenance  of  many  work-horses. 
The  destruction  of  wealth  involved  in  a  general  illumina- 
tion or  the  firing  of  a  salute  is  equivalent  to  the  burning 
up  of  so  much  food;  the  keeping  of  a  regiment  of  sol- 
diers, or  of  a  war-ship  and  her  crew,  is  the  diversion  to 


Chap.  IV.      DISPROOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  143 

unproductive  uses  of  labor  that  could  produce  subsist- 
ence for  many  thousands  of  people.  Thus  the  power  of 
any  population  to  produce  the  necessaries  of  life  is  not 
to  be  measured  by  the  necessaries  of  life  actually  pro- 
duced, but  by  the  expenditure  of  power  in  all  modes. 

There  is  no  necessity  for  abstract  reasoning.  The 
question  is  one  of  simple  fact.  Does  the  relative  power 
of  producing  wealth  decrease  with  the  increase  of  popu- 
lation? 

The  facts  are  so  patent  that  it  is  only  necessary  to  call 
attention  to  them.  We  have,  in  modern  times,  seen 
many  communities  advance  in  population.  Have  they 
not  at  the  same  time  advanced  even  more  rapidly  in 
wealth?  We  see  many  communities  still  increasing  in 
population.  Are  they  not  also  increasing  their  wealth 
still  faster?  Is  there  any  doubt  that  while  England  has 
been  increasing  her  population  at  the  rate  of  two  per 
cent,  per  annum,  her  wealth  has  been  growing  in  still 
greater  proportion?  Is  it  not  true  that  while  the  popu- 
lation of  the  United  States  has  been  doubling  every 
twenty-nine*  years  her  wealth  has  been  doubling  at 
much  shorter  intervals?  Is  it  not  true  that  under  sim- 
ilar conditions — that  is  to  say,  among  communities  of 
similar  people  in  a  similar  stage  of  civilization — the  most 
densely  populated  community  is  also  the  richest?  Are 
not  the  more  densely  populated  Eastern  States  richer  in 
proportion  to  population  than  the  more  sparsely  popu- 
lated Western  or  Southern  States?  Is  not  England, 
where  population  is  even  denser  than  in  the  Eastern 
States  of  the  Union,  also  richer  in  proportion?  Where 
will  you  find  wealth  devoted  with  the  most  lavishness  to 
non-productive  use — costly  buildings,  fine  furniture,  lux- 
urious equipages,  statues,  pictures,  pleasure  gardens  and 
yachts?    Is  it  not   where  population  is  densest  rather 

•The  rate  up  to  1860  was  35  per  cent,  each  decada 


144  POPULATION  AND  SITBSISTENCB.  Book  H 

than  where  it  is  sparsest?  Where  will  you  find  in  largest 
proportion  those  whom  the  general  production  suflBces  to 
keep  without  productive  labor  on  their  part — men  of  in- 
come and  of  elegant  leisure,  thieves,  policemen,  menial 
servants,  lawyers,  men  of  letters,  and  the  like?  Is  it  not 
where  population  is  dense  rather  than  where  it  is  sparse? 
"Whence  is  it  that  capital  overflows  for  remunerative  in- 
vestment? Is  it  not  from  densely  populated  countries  to 
sparsely  populated  countries?  These  things  conclusively 
show  that  wealth  is  greatest  where  population  is  densest; 
that  the  production  of  wealth  to  a  given  amount  of  labor 
increases  as  population  increases.  These  things  are  ap- 
parent wherever  we  turn  our  eyes.  On  the  same  level  of 
civilization,  the  same  stage  of  the  productive  arts,  gov- 
ernment, etc.,  the  most  populous  countries  are  always 
the  most  wealthy. 

Let  us  take  a  particular  case,  and  that  a  case  which  of 
all  that  can  be  cited  seems  at  first  blush  best  to  support 
the  theory  we  are  considering — the  case  of  a  community 
where,  while  population  has  largely  increased,  wages 
have  greatly  decreased,  and  it  is  not  a  matter  of  dubious 
inference  but  of  obvious  fact  that  the  generosity  of 
nature  has  lessened.  That  community  is  California. 
When  upon  the  discovery  of  gold  the  first  wave  of  immi- 
gration poured  into  California  it  found  a  country  in 
which  nature  was  in  the  most  generous  mood.  From 
the  river  banks  and  bars  the  glittering  deposits  of  thou- 
sands of  years  could  be  taken  by  the  most  primitive  appli- 
ances, in  amounts  which  made  an  ounce  ($16)  per  day 
only  ordinary  wages.  The  plains,  covered  with  nutri- 
tious grasses,  were  alive  with  countless  herds  of  horses 
and  cattle,  so  plenty  that  any  traveler  was  at  liberty  to 
shift  his  saddle  to  a  fresh  steed,  or  to  kill  a  bullock  if  he 
needed  a  steak,  leaving  the  hide,  its  only  valuable  part, 
for  the  owner.  From  the  rich  soil  which  came  first 
under  cultivation,  the  mere  plowing  and  sowing  brought 


Chap.  IV.      DISPKOOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY.  145 

crops  that  in  older  countries,  if  procured  at  all,  can  only 
be  procured  by  the  most  thorough  manuring  and  culti- 
vation. In  early  California,  amid  this  profusion  of 
nature,  wages  and  interest  were  higher  than  anywhere 
else  in  the  world. 

This  virgin  profusion  of  nature  has  been  steadily  giv- 
ing way  before  the  greater  and  greater  demands  which  an 
increasing  population  has  made  upon  it.  Poorer  and 
poorer  diggings  have  been  worked,  until  now  no  dig- 
gings worth  speaking  of  can  be  found,  and  gold  mining 
requires  much  capital,  large  skill,  and  elaborate  machin- 
ery, and  involves  great  risks.  "Horses  cost  money," 
and  cattle  bred  on  the  sage-brush  plains  of  Nevada  are 
brought  by  railroad  across  the  mountains  and  killed  in 
San  Francisco  shambles,  while  farmers  are  beginning  to 
save  their  straw  and  look  for  manure,  and  land  is  in  cul- 
tivation which  will  hardly  yield  a  crop  three  years  out 
of  four  without  irrigation.  At  the  same  time  wages  and 
interest  have  steadily  gone  down.  Many  men  are  now 
glad  to  work  for  a  week  for  less  than  they  once  demanded 
for  the  day,  and  money  is  loaned  by  the  year  for  a  rate 
which  once  would  hardly  have  been  thought  extortionate 
by  the  month.  Is  the  connection  between  the  reduced 
productiveness  of  nature  and  the  reduced  rate  of  wages 
that  of  cause  and  effect?  Is  it  true  that  wages  are  lower 
because  labor  yields  less  wealth?  On  the  contrary!  In- 
stead of  the  wealth-producing  power  of  labor  being  less 
in  California  in  1879  than  in  1849,  I  am  convinced  that 
it  is  greater.  And,  it  seems  to  me,  that  no  one  who 
considers  how  enormously  during  these  years  the  effici- 
ency of  labor  in  California  has  been  increased  by  roads, 
wharves,  flumes,  railroads,  steamboats,  telegraphs,  and 
machinery  of  all  kinds;  by  a  closer  connection  with  the 
rest  of  the  world;  and  by  the  numberless  economies  re- 
sulting from  a  larger  population,  can  doubt  that  the 
return  which  labor  receives  from  nature  in  California  is 


146  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  JL 

on  the  whole  much  greater  now  than  it  was  in  the  days  of 
unexhausted  placers  and  virgin  soil — the  increase  in  the 
power  of  the  human  factor  having  more  than  compen- 
sated for  the  decline  in  the  power  of  the  natural  factor. 
That  this  conclusion  is  the  correct  one  is  proved  by  many 
facts  which  show  that  the  consumption  of  wealth  is  now 
much  greater,  as  compared  with  the  number  of  laborers, 
than  it  was  then.  Instead  of  a  population  composed  al- 
most exclusively  of  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  women  and  children  are  now  supported,  and 
other  non-producers  have  increased  in  much  greater  ratio 
than  the  population;  luxury  has  grown  far  more  than 
wages  have  fallen;  where  the  best  houses  were  cloth  and 
paper  shanties,  are  now  mansions  whose  magnificence 
rivals  European  palaces;  there  are  liveried  carriages  on 
the  streets  of  San  Francisco  and  pleasure  yachts  on  her 
bay;  the  class  who  can  live  sumptuously  on  their  incomes 
has  steadily  grown;  there  are  rich  men  beside  whom  the 
richest  of  the  earlier  years  would  seem  little  better  than 
paupers — in  short,  there  are  on  every  hand  the  most 
striking  and  conclusive  evidences  that  the  production 
and  consumption  of  wealth  have  increased  with  even 
greater  rapidity  than  the  increase  of  population,  and  that 
if  any  class  obtains  less  it  is  solely  because  of  the  greater 
inequality  of  distribution. 

What  is  obvious  in  this  particular  instance  is  obvious 
where  the  survey  is  extended.  The  richest  countries 
are  not  those  where  nature  is  most  prolific;  but  those 
where  labor  is  most  efficient — not  Mexico,  but  Massa- 
chusetts; not  Brazil,  but  England.  The  countries  where 
population  is  densest  and  presses  hardest  upon  the  capa- 
bilities of  nature,  are,  other  things  being  equal,  the 
countries  where  the  largest  proportion  of  the  produce 
can  be  devoted  to  luxury  and  the  support  of  non-pro- 
ducers, the  countries  where  capital  overflows,  the  coun- 
tries that  upon  exigency,  such  as  war,  can  stand  the 


ekap.ir.     DISPROOF  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAlf  TflEOBY.  147 

greatest  drain.  That  the  production  of  wealth  mngt,  in 
proportion  to  the  labor  employed,  be  greater  in  a  densely 
populated  country  like  England  than  in  new  countries 
where  wages  and  interest  are  higher,  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that,  though  a  much  smaller  proportion  of  the  popu- 
lation is  engaged  in  productive  labor,  a  much  larger  sur- 
plus is  available  for  other  purposes  than  that  of  supplying 
physical  needs.  In  a  new  country  the  whole  available 
force  of  the  community  is  devoted  to  production — there 
is  no  well  man  who  does  not  do  productive  work  of  some 
kind,  no  well  woman  exempt  from  household  tasks. 
There  are  no  paupers  or  beggars,  no  idle  rich,  no  class 
whose  labor  is  devoted  to  ministering  to  the  convenience 
or  caprice  of  the  rich,  no  purely  literary  or  scientific 
class,  no  criminal  class  who  live  by  preying  upon  society, 
no  largo  class  maintained  to  guard  society  against  them. 
Yet  with  the  whole  force  of  the  community  thus  devoted 
to  production,  no  such  consumption  of  wealth  in  propor- 
tion to  the  whole  population  takes  place,  or  can  be 
afforded,  as  goes  on  in  the  old  country;  for,  though  the 
condition  of  the  lowest  class  is  better,  and  there  is  no  one 
who  cannot  get  a  living,  there  is  no  one  who  gets  much 
more — few  or  none  who  can  live  in  anything  like  what 
would  be  called  luxury,  or  even  comfort,  in  the  older 
country.  That  is  to  say,  that  in  the  older  country  the 
consumption  of  wealth  in  proportion  to  population  is 
greater,  although  the  proportion  of  labor  devoted  to  the 
production  of  wealth  is  less — or  that  fewer  laborers  pro- 
duce more  wealth;  for  wealth  must  be  produced  beforeit 
can  be  consumed.  ■'^t.>:r>fi 

It  may,  however,  be  said,  that  the  superior  wealth  of 
older  countries  is  due  not  to  superior  productive  power, 
but  to  the  accumulations  of  wealth  which  the  new  country 
has  not  yet  had  time  to  make. 

It  will  be  well  for  a  moment  to  consider  this  idea  of 
accumulated  wealth.     The  truth  is,  that  wealth  can  be 


148  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Book  H 

accumulated  but  to  a  slight  degree,  and  that  communities 
really  live,  as  the  vast  majority  of  individuals  live,  from 
hand  to  mouth.  Wealth  will  not  bear  much  accumula- 
tion; except  in  a  few  unimportant  forms  it  will  not  keep. 
The  matter  of  the  universe,  which,  when  worked  up  by 
labor  into  desirable  forms,  constitutes  wealth,  is  con- 
stantly tending  back  to  its  original  state.  Some  forms 
of  wealth  will  last  for  a  few  hours,  some  for  a  few  days, 
some  for  a  few  months,  some  for  a  few  years;  and  there 
are  very  few  forms  of  wealth  that  can  be  passed  from  one 
generation  to  another.  Take  wealth  in  some  of  its  most 
useful  and  permanent  forms — ships,  houses,  railways, 
machinery.  Unless  labor  is  constantly  exerted  in  pre- 
serving and  renewing  them,  they  will  almost  immediately 
become  useless.  Stop  labor  in  any  community,  and 
wealth  would  vanish  almost  as  the  jet  of  a  fountain 
vanishes  when  the  flow  of  water  is  shut  off.  Let  labor 
again  exert  itself,  and  wealth  will  almost  as  immediately 
reappear.  This  has  been  long  noticed  where  war  or 
other  calamity  has  swept  away  wealth,  leaving  population 
unimpaired.  There  is  not  less  wealth  in  London  to-day 
because  of  the  great  fire  of  1666;  nor  yet  is  there  less 
wealth  in  Chicago  because  of  the  great  fire  of  1870.  On 
those  fire-swept  acres  have  arisen,  under  the  hand  of 
labor,  more  magnificent  buildings,  filled  with  greater 
stocks  of  goods;  and  the  stranger  who,  ignorant  of  the 
history  of  the  city,  passes  along  those  stately  avenues 
would  not  dream  that  a  few  years  ago  all  lay  so  black  and 
bare.  The  same  principle — that  wealth  is  constantly  re- 
created— is  obvious  in  every  new  city.  Given  the  same 
population  and  the  same  eflBciency  of  labor,  and  the  town 
of  yesterday  will  possess  and  enjoy  as  much  as  the  town 
founded  by  the  Romans.  No  one  who  has  seen  Mel- 
bourne or  San  Francisco  can  doubt  that  if  the  population 
of  England  were  transported  to  New  Zealand,  leaving  all 
accumulated  wealth  behind.  New  Zealand  would  soon  bo 


Chap.  IV.      DISPROOF  OF  THE  MALTHT7SIAK  THEORY.  149 

as  rich  as  England  is  now;  or,  conversely,  that  if  the 
population  of  England  were  reduced  to  the  sparseness  of 
the  present  population  of  New  Zealand,  in  spite  of  accu- 
mulated wealth,  they  would  soon  be  as  poor.  Accumu- 
lated wealth  seems  to  play  just  about  such  a  part  in  rela- 
tion to  the  social  organism  as  accumulated  nutriment 
does  to  the  physical  organism.  Some  accumulated  wealth 
is  necessary,  and  to  a  certain  extent  it  may  be  drawn 
upon  in  exigencies;  but  the  wealth  produced  by  past  gen- 
erations can  no  more  account  for  the  consumption  of 
the  present  than  the  dinners  he  ate  last  year  can  supply  a 
man  with  present  strength. 

But  without  these  considerations,  which  I  allude  to 
more  for  their  general  than  for  their  special  bearing,  it 
is  evident  that  superior  accumulations  of  wealth  can  ac- 
count for  greater  consumption  of  wealth  only  in  cases  where 
accumulated  wealth  is  decreasing,  and  that  wherever  the 
volume  of  accumulated  wealth  is  maintained,  and  even 
more  obviously  where  it  is  increasing,  a  greater  consump- 
tion of  wealth  must  imply  a  greater  production  of 
wealth.  Now,  whether  we  compare  different  communi- 
ties with  each  other,  or  the  same  community  at  different 
times,  it  is  obvious  that  the  progressive  state,  which  is 
marked  by  increase  of  population,  is  also  marked  by  an 
increased  consumption  and  an  increased  accumulation  of 
wealth,  not  merely  in  the  aggregate,  but  per  capita. 
And  hence,  increase  of  population,  so  far  as  it  has  yet 
anywhere  gone,  does  not  mean  a  reduction,  but  an  in- 
crease in  the  average  production  of  wealth. 

And  the  reason  of  this  is  obvious.  For,  even  if  the 
increase  of  population  does  reduce  the  power  of  the 
natural  factor  of  wealth,  by  compelling  a  resort  to  poorer 
soils,  etc.,  it  yet  so  vastly  increases  the  power  of  the 
human  factor  as  more  than  to  compensate.  Twenty 
men  working  together  will,  where  nature  is  niggardly, 
produce  more  than  twenty  times  the  wealth  that  one  mar 


150  POPULATION  AND  SUBSISTENCE.  Boole  IL 

can  produce  where  nature  is  most  bountiful.  The  denser 
the  population  the  more  minute  becomes  the  subdivision 
of  labor,  the  greater  the  economies  of  production  and 
distribution,  and,  hence,  the  very  reverse  of  the  Malthu- 
sian  doctrine  is  true;  and,  within  the  limits  in  which  we 
have  reason  to  suppose  increase  would  still  go  on,  in  any 
given  state  of  civilization  a  greater  number  of  people  can 
produce  a  larger  proportionate  amount  of  wealth,  and 
more  fully  supply  their  wants,  than  can  a  smaller 
number. 

Look  simply  at  the  facts.  Can  anything  be  clearer 
than  that  the  cause  of  the  poverty  which  festers  in  the 
centers  of  civilization  is  not  in  the  weakness  of  the  pro- 
ductive forces?  In  countries  where  poverty  is  deepest, 
the  forces  of  production  are  evidently  strong  enough,  if 
fully  employed,  to  provide  for  the  lowest  not  merely 
comfort  but  luxury.  The  industrial  paralysis,  the  com- 
mercial depression  which  curses  the  civilized  world  to-day, 
evidently  springs  from  no  lack  of  productive  power. 
Whatever  be  the  trouble,  it  is  clearly  not  in  the  want  of 
ability  to  produce  wealth. 

It  is  this  very  fact — that  want  appears  where  produc- 
tive power  is  greatest  and  the  production  of  wealth  is 
largest — that  constitutes  the  enigma  which  perplexes  the 
civilized  world,  and  which  we  are  trying  to  unravel. 
Evidently  the  Malthusian  theory,  which  attributes  want 
to  the  decrease  of  productive  power,  will  not  explain  it. 
That  theory  is  utterly  inconsistent  with  all  the  facts.  It 
is  really  a  gratuitous  attribution  to  the  laws  of  God  of 
results  which,  even  from  this  examination,  we  may  infer 
really  spring  from  the  mal-adjustments  of  men — an  infer- 
ence which,  as  we  proceed,  will  become  a  demonstration. 
For  we  have  yet  to  find  what  does  produce  poverty  amid 
advancing  wealth. 


BOOK  III. 

THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION. 


CHAPTER         I. — : 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHAPTER  III. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

CHAPTER  V. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

CHAPTER  VIII. — • 


•THE  INQUIRY  NARROWED  TO  THE  LAWS 
OF  DISTRIBUTION — NECESSARY  RELA- 
TION OF  THESE  LAWS. 

•RENT  AND  THE  LAW  OF  RENT. 

INTEREST  AND  THE  CAUSE   OF  INTEREST. 

■OF  SPURIOUS  CAPITAL  AND  OF  PROFITS 
OFTEN  MISTAKEN   FOR  INTEREST. 

THE   LAW  OF  INTEREST. 

WAGES   AND  THE   LAW  OF  WAGES. 

CORRELATION  AND  CO-ORDINATION  OP 
THESE  LAWS. 

THE  STATICS  OP  THE  PROBLEM  THUS 
EXPLAINED. 


The  machines  that  are  first  invented  to  perform  any  particular 
movement  are  always  the  most  complex,  and  succeeding  artists 
generally  discover  that  with  fewer  wheels,  with  fewer  principles  of 
motion  than  had  originally  been  employed,  the  same  effects  may  be 
more  easily  produced.  The  first  philosophical  systems,  in  the  same 
manner,  are  always  the  most  complex,  and  a  particular  connecting 
chain,  or  principle,  is  generally  thought  necessary  to  unite  every  two 
seemingly  disjointed  appearances;  but  it  often  happens  that  one 
great  connecting  principle  is  afterward  found  to  be  sufficient  to  bind 
together  all  the  discordant  phenomena  that  occur  in  a  whole  species 
of  things. — Adam  Smith,  Essay  on  the  Principles  which  Lead  and 
Direct  Philosophical  Inquiries,  as  Illustraied  by  1M  Exstary  cf 
Astronomy. 


CHAPTER  I. 

tHB    INQUIRY    NARROWED    TO    THE     LAWS  OF     DISTRIBU- 
TION— ^THB  NECESSARY   RELATION  OF  THESE  LAWS. 

The  preceding  examination  has,  I  think,  conclusively 
shown  that  the  explanation  currently  given,  in  the  name 
of  political  economy,  of  the  problem  we  are  attempting 
to  solve,  is  no  explanation  at  all. 

That  with  material  progress  wages  fail  to  increase,  but 
rather  tend  to  decrease,  cannot  be  explained  by  the  theory 
that  the  increase  of  laborers  constantly  tends  to  divide 
into  smaller  portions  the  capital  sum  from  which  wages 
are  paid.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  wages  do  not  come  from 
capital,  but  are  the  direct  produce  of  labor.  Each  pro- 
ductive laborer,  as  he  works,  creates  his  wages,  and  with 
every  additional  laborer  there  is  an  addition  to  the  true 
wages  fund — an  addition  to  the  common  stock  of  wealth, 
which,  generally  speaking,  is  considerably  greater  than 
the  amount  he  draws  in  wages. 

Nor,  yet,  can  it  be  explained  by  the  theory  that  nature 
yields  less  to  the  increasing  drafts  which  an  increasing 
population  make  upon  her;  for  the  increased  eflBciency 
of  labor  makes  the  progressive  state  a  state  of  continually 
increasing  production  per  capita,  and  the  countries  of 
densest  population,  other  things  being  equal,  are  always 
the  countries  of  greatest  wealth. 

So  far,  we  have  only  increased  the  perplexities  of  the 
problem.  We  have  overthrown  a  theory  which  did,  in 
some  sort  of  fashion,  explain  existing  facts;  but  in  doing 
so  have  only  made  existing  facts  seem  more  inexplicable. 
It  is  as  though,  while  the  Ptolemaic  theory  was  yet  in 


154  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  UL 

its  strength,  it  had  been  proved  simply  that  the  sun  and 
stars  do  not  revolve  about  the  earth.  The  phenomena 
of  day  and  night,  and  of  the  apparent  motion  of  the 
celestial  bodies,  would  yet  remain  unexplained,  inevitably 
to  reinstate  the  old  theory  unless  a  better  one  took 
its  place.  Our  reasoning  has  led  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  each  productive  laborer  produces  his  own  wages,  and 
that  increase  in  the  number  of  laborers  should  increase 
the  wages  of  each;  whereas,  the  apparent  facts  are  that 
there  are  many  laborers  who  cannot  obtain  remunerative 
employment,  and  that  increase  in  the  number  of  laborers 
brings  diminution  of  wages.  We  have,  in  short,  proved 
that  wages  ought  to  be  highest  where  in  reality  they  are 
lowest. 

Nevertheless,  even  in  doing  this  we  have  made  some 
progress.  Next  to  finding  what  we  look  for,  is  to  dis- 
cover where  it  is  useless  to  look.  We  hav^  at  least  nar- 
rowed the  field  of  inquiry.  For  this,  at  least,  is  now 
clear — that  the  cause  which,  in  spite  of  the  enormous 
increase  of  productive  power,  confines  the  great  body  of 
producers  to  the  least  share  of  the  product  upon  which 
they  will  consent  to  live,  is  not  the  limitation  of  capital, 
nor  yet  the  limitation  of  the  powers  of  nature  which 
respond  to  labor.  As  it  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  found  in 
the  laws  which  bound  the  production  of  wealth,  it  must 
be  sought  in  the  laws  which  govern  distribution.  To 
them  let  us  turn. 

It  will  be  necessary  to  review  in  its  main  branches  the 
whole  subject  of  the  distribution  of  wealth.  To  discover 
the  cause  which,  as  population  increases  and  the  produc- 
tive arts  advance,  deepens  the  poverty  of  the  lowest 
class,  we  must  find  the  law  which  determines  what  part 
of  the  produce  is  distributed  to  labor  as  wages.  To  find 
the  law  of  wages,  or  at  least  to  make  sure  when  we  have 
found  it,  we  must  also  determine  the  laws  which  fix  th« 


Chap.  I.  THEIR   NECESSA.RY  RELATIOIS".  155 

part  of  the  produce  which  goes  to  capital  and  the  part 
which  goes  to  land  owners,  for  as  land,  labor,  and  capital 
join  in  producing  wealth,  it  is  between  these  three  that 
the  produce  must  be  divided.  What  is  meant  by  the 
produce  or  production  of  a  community  is  the  sum  of  the 
wealth  produced  by  that  community — 'the  general  fund 
from  which,  as  long  as  previously  existing  stock  is  not 
lessened,  all  consumption  must  be  met  and  all  revenues 
drawn.  As  I  have  already  explained,  production  does 
not  merely  mean  the  making  of  things,  but  includes  the 
increase  of  value  gained  by  transporting  or  exchanging 
things.  There  is  a  produce  of  wealth  in  a  purely  com- 
mercial community,  as  there  is  in  a  purely  agricultural 
or  manufacturing  community;  and  in  the  one  case,  as  in 
the  others,  some  part  of  this  produce  will  go  to  capital, 
some  part  to  labor,  and  some  part,  if  land  have  any  value, 
to  the  owners  of  land.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  portion  of 
the  wealth  produced  is  constantly  going  to  the  replace- 
ment of  capital,  which  is  constantly  consumed  and  con- 
stantly replaced.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  take  this  into 
account,  as  it  is  eliminated  by  considering  capital  as 
continuous,  which,  in  speaking  or  thinking  of  it,  we 
habitually  do.  When  we  speak  of  the  produce,  we  mean, 
therefore,  that  part  of  the  wealth  produced  above  what  is 
necessary  to  replace  the  capital  consumed  in  production; 
and  when  we  speak  of  interest,  or  the  return  to  capital, 
we  mean  what  goes  to  capital  after  its  replacement  or 
maintenance. 

It  is,  further,  a  matter  of  fact,  that  in  every  commu- 
nity which  has  passed  the  most  primitive  stage  some 
portion  of  the  produce  is  taken  in  taxation  and  con- 
sumed by  government.  But  it  is  not  necessary,  in  seek- 
ing the  laws  of  distribution,  to  take  this  into  considera- 
tion. We  may  consider  taxation  either  as  not  existing, 
or  as  by  so  much  reducing  the  produce.  And  so,  too,  of 
what  is  taken  from  the  produce  by  certain  forms  of  mon- 


156  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  m 

opoly,  which  will  be  considered  in  a  subsequent  chapter 
(Chap.  IV),  and  which  exercise  powers  analogous  to  tax- 
ation. After  we  have  discovered  the  laws  of  distribution 
we  can  then  see  what  bearing,  if  any,  taxation  has  upon 
them. 

We  must  discover  these  laws  of  distribution  for  our- 
selves— or,  at  least,  two  out  of  the  three.  For,  that  they 
are  not,  at  least  as  a  whole,  correctly  apprehended  by  the 
current  political  economy,  may  be  seen,  irrespective  of 
our  preceding  examination  of  one  of  them,  in  any  of 
the  standard  treatises. 

This  is  evident,  in  the  first  place,  from  the  terminol- 
ogy employed. 

In  all  politico-economic  works  we  are  told  that  the 
three  factors  in  production  are  land,  labor,  and  capital, 
and  that  the  whole  produce  is  primarily  distributed  into 
three  corresponding  parts.  Three  terms,  therefore,  are 
needed,  each  of  which  shall  clearly  express  one  of  these 
parts  to  the  exclusion  of  the  others.  Eent,  as  defined, 
clearly  enough  expresses  the  first  of  these  parts — that 
which  goes  to  the  owners  of  land.  Wages,  as  defined, 
clearly  enough  expresses  the  second — that  part  which 
constitutes  the  return  to  labor.  But  as  to  the  third 
term — that  which  should  express  the  return  to  capital — 
there  is  in  the  standard  works  a  most  puzzling  ambiguity 
and  confusion. 

Of  words  in  common  use,  that  which  comes  nearest  to 
exclusively  expressing  the  idea  of  return  for  the  use  of 
capital,  is  interest,  which,  as  commonly  used,  implies 
the  return  for  the  use  of  capital,  exclusive  of  any  labor 
in  its  use  or  management,  and  exclusive  of  any  risk,  ex- 
cept such  as  may  be  involved  in  the  security.  The  word 
profits,  as  commonly  used,  is  almost  synonymous  with 
revenue;  it  means  a  gain,  an  amount  received  in  excess 
of  an  amount  expended,  and  frequently  includes  receipts 
that  are  properly  rent;  while  it  nearly  always  includes 


Chapel.  THEIR  NECESSARY   RELATION.  157 

receipts  which  are  properly  wages,  as  well  as  compensa- 
tions for  the  risk  peculiar  to  the  various  uses  of  capital. 
Unless  extreme  violence  is  done  to  the  meaning  of  the 
word,  it  cannot,  therefore,  be  used  in  political  economy 
to  signify  that  share  of  the  produce  which  goes  to  capi- 
tal, in  contradistinction  to  those  parts  which  go  to  labor 
and  to  land  owners. 

Now,  all  this  is  recognized  in  the  standard  works  on 
political  economy.  Adam  Smith  well  illustrates  how 
wages  and  compensation  for  risk  largely  enter  into  prof- 
its, pointing  out  how  the  large  profits  of  apothecaries 
and  small  retail  dealers  are  in  reality  wages  for  their 
labor,  and  not  interest  on  their  capital;  and  how  the 
great  profits  sometimes  made  in  risky  businesses,  such  as 
smuggling  and  the  lumber  trade,  are  really  but  compen- 
sations for  risk,  which,  in  the  long  run,  reduce  the 
returns  to  capital  so  used  to  the  ordinary,  or  below  the 
ordinary,  rate.  Similar  illustrations  are  given  in  most  of 
the  subsequent  works,  where  profit  is  formally  defined  in 
its  common  sense,  with,  perhaps,  the  exclusion  of  rent. 
In  all  these  works,  the  reader  is  told  that  profits  are 
made  up  of  three  elements — wages  of  superintendence, 
compensation  for  risk,  and  interest,  or  the  return  for  the 
use  of  capital. 

Thus,  neither  in  its  common  meaning  nor  in  the  mean- 
ing expressly  assigned  to  it  in  the  current  political  econ- 
omy, can  profits  have  any  place  in  the  discussion  of  the 
distribution  of  wealth  between  the  three  factors  of  pro- 
duction. Either  in  its  common  meaning  or  in  the  mean- 
ing expressly  assigned  to  it,  to  talk  about  the  distribution 
of  wealth  into  rent,  wages,  and  profits  is  like  talking  of 
the  division  of  mankind  into  men,  women,  and  human 
beings. 

Yet  this,  to  the  utter  bewilderment  of  the  reader,  is 
what  is  done  in  all  the  standard  works.  After  formally 
decomposing  profits  into  wagec  of  superintendence,  com- 


158  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBFTION.  Book  III 

pensation  for  risk,  and  interest — the  net  return  for  the 
use  of  capital — they  proceed  to  treat  of  the  distribution 
of  wealth  between  the  rent  of  land,  the  wages  of  labor, 
and  the  profits  of  capital. 

I  doubt  not  that  there  are  thousands  of  men  who  have 
vainly  puzzled  their  brains  over  this  confusion  of  terms, 
and  abandoned  the  effort  in  despair,  thinking  that  as  the 
fault  could  not  be  in  such  great  thinkers,  it  must  be  in 
their  own  stupidity.  If  it  is  any  consolation  to  such  men 
they  may  turn  to  Buckle's  ''History  of  Civilization,'' and 
see  how  a  man  who  certainly  got  a  marvelously  clear  idea 
of  what  he  read,  and  who  had  read  carefully  the  principal 
economists  from  Smith  down,  was  inextricably  confused 
by  this  jumble  of  profits  and  interest.  For  Buckle  (Vol. 
1,  Chap.  II,  and  notes)  persistently  speaks  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  into  rent,  wages,  interest,  a7id  profits. 

And  this  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  For,  after 
formally  decomposing  profits  into  wages  of  superintend- 
ence, insurance,  and  interest,  these  economists,  in  as- 
signing causes  which  fix  the  general  rate  of  profit,  speak 
of  things  which  evidently  affect  only  that  part  of  profits 
which  they  have  denominated  interest;  and  then,  in 
speaking  of  the  rate  of  interest,  either  give  the  meaning- 
less formula  of  supply  and  demand,  or  speak  of  causes 
Avhich  affect  the  compensation  for  risk;  evidently  using 
the  word  in  its  common  sense,  and  not  in  the  economic 
sense  they  have  assigned  to  it,  from  which  compensation 
for  risk  is  eliminated.  If  the  reader  will  take  up  John 
Stuart  Mill's  "Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  and 
compare  the  chapter  on  Profits  (Book  II,  Chap.  15)  with 
the  chapter  on  Interest  (Book  III,  Chap.  23),  he  will  see 
the  confusion  thus  arising  exemplified  in  the  case  of  the 
most  logical  of  English  economists,  in  a  more  striking 
manner  than  I  would  like  to  characterize. 

Now,  such  men  have  not  been  led  into  such  confusion 
of  thought  without  a  cause.     If  they,  one  after  another. 


Oiap.L  THEIR  NECESSARY   RELATIOlf.  159 

have  followed  Dr.  Adam  Smith,  as  boys  play  "follow  my 
leader,"  jumping  where  he  jumped,  and  falling  where 
he  fell,  it  has  been  that  there  was  a  fence  where  he 
jumped  and  a  hole  where  he  fell. 

The  difficulty  from  which  this  confusion  has  sprung  is 
in  the  preaccepted  theory  of  wages.  For  reasons  which 
I  have  before  assigned,  it  has  seemed  to  them  a  self- 
evident  truth  that  the  wages  of  certain  classes  of  laborers 
depended  upon  the  ratio  between  capital  and  the  num- 
ber of  laborers.  But  there  are  certain  kinds  of  reward 
for  exertion  to  which  this  theory  evidently  will  not 
apply,  so  the  term  wages  has  in  use  been  contracted  to 
include  only  wages  in  the  narrow  common  sense.  This 
being  the  case,  if  the  term  interest  were  used,  as  consist- 
ently with  their  definitions  it  should  have  been  used,  to 
represent  the  third  part  of  the  division  of  the  produce, 
all  rewards  of  personal  exertion,  save  those  of  what  are 
commonly  called  wage-workers,  would  clearly  have  been 
left  out.  But  by  treating  the  division  of  wealth  as  be- 
tween rent,  wages,  and  profits,  instead  of  between  rent, 
wages,  and  interest,  this  difficulty  is  glossed  over,  all 
wages  which  will  not  fall  under  the  preaccepted  law  of 
wages  being  vaguely  grouped  under  profits,  as  wages  of 
superintendence. 

To  read  carefully  what  economists  say  about  the  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  is  to  see  that,  though  they  correctly 
define  it,  wages,  as  they  use  it  in  this  connection,  is  what 
logicians  would  call  an  undistributed  term — it  does  not 
mean  all  wages,  but  only  some  wages — viz.,  the  wages  of 
manual  labor  paid  by  an  employer.  So  other  wages  are 
thrown  over  with  the  return  to  capital,  and  included 
under  the  term  profits,  and  any  clear  distinction  between 
the  returns  to  capital  and  the  returns  to  human  exertion 
thus  avoided.  The  fact  is  that  the  current  political  econ- 
omy fails  to  give  any  clear  and  consistent  account  of  the 
distribution  of  wealth.    The  law  of  rent  is  clearly  stated. 


160  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Sock  m. 

but  it  stands  unrelated.  The  rest  is  a  confused  and 
incoherent  jumble. 

The  very  arrangement  of  these  works  shows  this  con- 
fusion and  inconclusiveness  of  thought.  In  no  politico- 
economic  treatise  that  I  know  of  are  these  laws  of  dis- 
tribution brought  together,  so  that  the  reader  can  take 
them  in  at  a  glance  and  recognize  their  relation  to  each 
other;  but  what  is  said  about  each  one  is  enveloped  in  a 
mass  of  political  and  moral  reflections  and  dissertations. 
And  the  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  To  bring  together  the 
three  laws  of  distribution  as  they  are  now  taught,  is  to 
show  at  a  glance  that  they  lack  necessary  relation. 

The  laws  of  the  distribution  of  wealth  are  obviously 
laws  of  proportion,  and  must  be  so  related  to  each  other 
that  any  two  being  given  the  third  may  be  inferred. 
For  to  say  that  one  of  the  three  parts  of  a  whole  is  in- 
creased or  decreased,  is  to  say  that  one  or  both  of  the 
other  parts  is,  reversely,  decreased  or  increased.  If  Tom, 
Dick,  and  Harry  are  partners  in  business,  the  agreement 
which  fixes  the  share  of  one  in  the  profits  must  at  the 
same  time  fix  either  the  separate  or  the  joint  shares  of 
the  other  two.  To  fix  Tom's  share  at  forty  per  cent,  is 
to  leave  but  sixty  per  cent,  to  be  divided  between  Dick 
and  Harry.  To  fix  Dick's  share  at  forty  per  cent,  and 
Harry's  share  at  thirty-five  per  cent,  is  to  fix  Tom's  share 
at  twenty-five  per  cent. 

But  between  the  laws  of  the  distribution  of  wealth,  as 
laid  down  in  the  standard  works,  there  is  no  such  rela- 
tion. If  we  fish  them  out  and  bring  them  together,  we 
find  them  to  be  as  follows: 

Wages  are  determined  by  the  ratio  between  the  amount 
of  capital  devoted  to  the  payment  and  subsistence  of 
labor  and  the  number  of  laborers  seeking  employment. 

Rent  is  determined  by  the  margin  of  cultivation;  all 
lands  yielding  as  rent  that  part  of  their  produce  which 
exceeds  what  an  equal  application  of  labor  and  capital 
oonld  procure  from  the  poorest  land  in  use. 


Chap.  I.  THEIR  NECESSARY  RELATION.  161 

Interest  is  determined  by  the  equation  between  the  de- 
mands of  borrowers  and  the  supply  of  capital  offered  by 
lenders.  Or,  if  we  take  what  is  given  as  the  law  of  prof- 
its, it  is  determined  by  wages,  falling  as  wages  rise  and  ris- 
ing as  wages  fall — or,  to  use  the  phrase  of  Mill,  by  the 
cost  of  labor  to  the  capitalist. 

The  bringing  together  of  these  current  statements  of 
the  laws  of  the  distribution  of  wealth  shows  at  a  glance 
that  they  lack  the  relation  to  each  other  which  the  true 
laws  of  distribution  must  have.  They  do  not  correlate 
and  co-ordinate.  Hence,  at  least  two  of  these  three  laws 
are  either  wrongly  apprehended  or  wrongly  stated.  This 
tallies  with  what  we  have  already  seen,  that  the  current 
apprehension  of  the  law  of  wages,  and,  inferentially,  of 
the  law  of  interest,  will  not  bear  examination.  Let  us, 
then,  seek  the  true  laws  of  the  distribution  of  the  prod- 
uce of  labor  into  wages,  rent,  and  interest.  The  proof 
that  we  have  found  them  will  be  in  their  correlation — 
that  they  meet,  and  relate,  and  mutually  bound  each 
other. 

With  profits  this  inquiry  has  manifestly  nothing  to  do. 
We  want  to  find  what  it  is  that  determines  the  division 
of  their  joint  produce  between  land,  labor,  and  capital; 
and  profits  is  not  a  term  that  refers  exclusively  to  any 
one  of  these  three  divisions.  Of  the  three  parts  into 
which  profits  are  divided  by  political  economists — - 
namely,  compensation  for  risk,  wages  of  superintendence, 
and  return  for  the  use  of  capital — the  latter  falls  under 
the  term  interest,  which  includes  all  the  returns  for  the 
use  of  capital,  and  excludes  everything  else;  wages  of  su- 
perintendence falls  under  the  term  wages,  which  includes 
all  returns  for  human  exertion,  and  excludes  everything 
else;  and  compensation  for  risk  has  no  place  whatever,  as 
risk  is  eliminated  when  all  the  transactions  of  a  commu- 
nity are  taken  together.  I  shall,  therefore,  consistently 
with  the  definitions  of  political  economists,  use  the  term 


162  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  UL 

interest  as  signifying  that  part  of  the  produce  which  goes 
to  capital. 

To  recapitulate: 

Land,  labor,  and  capital  are  the  factors  of  production. 
The  term  land  includes  all  natural  opportunities  or 
forces;  the  term  labor,  all  human  exertion;  and  the  term 
capital,  all  wealth  used  to  produce  more  wealth.  In  re- 
turns to  these  three  factors  is  the  whole  produce  dis- 
tributed. That  part  which  goes  to  land  owners  as  pay- 
ment for  the  use  of  natural  opportunities  is  called  rent; 
that  part  which  constitutes  the  reward  of  human  exer- 
tion is  called  wages;  and  that  part  which  constitutes  the 
return  for  the  use  of  capital  is  called  interest.  These 
terms  mutually  exclude  each  other.  The  income  of  any 
individual  may  be  made  up  from  any  one,  two,  or  all 
three  of  these  sources;  but  in  the  effort  to  discover  the 
laws  of  distribution  we  must  keep  them  separate. 

Let  me  premise  the  inquiry  which  we  are  about  to  un- 
dertake by  saying  that  the  miscarriage  of  political  econ- 
omy, which  I  think  has  now  been  abundantly  shown,  can, 
it  seems  to  me,  be  traced  to  the  adoption  of  an  erroneous 
standpoint.  Living  and  making  their  observations  in  a 
state  of  society  in  which  a  capitalist  generally  rents  land 
and  hires  labor,  and  thus  seems  to  be  the  undertaker  or 
first  mover  in  production,  the  great  cultivators  of  the 
science  have  been  led  to  look  upon  capital  as  the  prime 
factor  in  production,  land  as  its  instrument,  and  labor 
as  its  agent  or  tool.  This  is  apparent  on  every  page — in 
the  form  and  course  of  their  reasoning,  in  the  character 
of  their  illustrations,  and  even  in  their  choice  of  terms. 
Everywhere  capital  is  the  starting  point,  the  capitalist 
the  central  figure.  So  far  does  this  go  that  both  Smith 
and  Ricardo  use  the  term  "natural  wages"  to  express  the 
minimum  upon  which  laborers  can  live;  whereas,  unless 
injustice  is  natural,  all  that  the  laborer  produces  should 


Chap.L  THEIR  NECESSARY   RELATION.  163 

rather  be  held  as  his  natural  wages.  This  habit  of  look- 
ing upon  capital  as  the  employer  of  labor  has  led  both  to 
the  theory  that  wages  depend  upon  the  relative  abun- 
dance of  capital,  and  to  the  theory  that  interest  varies 
inversely  with  wages,  while  it  has  led  away  from  truths 
that  but  for  this  habit  would  have  been  apparent.  In 
short,  the  misstep  which,  so  far  as  the  great  laws  of  dis- 
tribution are  concerned,  has  led  political  economy  into 
the  jungles,  instead  of  upon  the  mountain  tops,  was 
taken  when  Adam  Smith,  in  his  first  book,  left  the 
standpoint  indicated  in  the  sentence,  "The  produce  of 
labor  constitutes  the  natural  recompense  or  wages  of 
labor,"  to  take  that  in  which  capital  is  considered  as 
employing  labor  and  paying  wages. 

But  when  we  consider  the  origin  and  natural  sequence 
of  things,  this  order  is  reversed;  and  capital  instead  of 
first  is  last;  instead  of  being  the  employer  of  labor,  it  is 
in  reality  employed  by  labor.  There  must  be  land  be- 
fore labor  can  be  exerted,  and  labor  must  be  exerted 
before  capital  can  be  produced.  Capital  is  a  result  of 
labor,  and  is  used  by  labor  to  assist  it  in  further  produc- 
tion. Labor  is  the  active  and  initial  force,  and  labor  is 
therefore  the  employer  of  capital.  Labor  can  be  exerted 
only  upon  land,  and  it  is  from  land  that  the  matter 
which  it  transmutes  into  wealth  must  be  drawn.  Land 
therefore  is  the  condition  precedent,  the  field  and  ma- 
terial of  labor.  The  natural  order  is  land,  labor,  capital; 
and,  instead  of  starting  from  capital  as  our  initial  point, 
we  should  start  from  land. 

There  is  another  thing  to  be  observed.  Capital  is  not 
a  necessary  factor  in  production.  Labor  exerted  upon 
land  can  produce  wealth  without  the  aid  of  capital,  and 
in  the  necessary  genesis  of  things  must  so  produce 
wealth  before  capital  can  exist.  Therefore  the  law  of 
rent  and  the  law  of  wages  must  correlate  each  other  and 
form  a  perfect  whole  without  reference  to  the  law  of 


164  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  ni. 

capital,  as  otherwise  these  laws  would  not  fit  the  cases 
which  can  readily  be  imagined,  and  which  to  some  degree 
actually  exist,  in  which  capital  takes  no  part  in  produc- 
tion. And  as  capital  is,  as  is  often  said,  but  stored-up 
labor,  it  is  but  a  form  of  labor,  a  subdivision  of  the  gen- 
eral term  labor;  and  its  law  must  be  subordinate  to,  and 
independently  correlate  with,  the  law  of  wages,  so  as  to 
fit  cases  in  which  the  whole  produce  is  divided  between 
labor  and  capital,  without  any  deduction  for  rent.  To 
resort  to  the  illustration  before  used:  The  division  of  the 
produce  between  land,  labor  and  capital  must  be  as  it 
would  be  between  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  if  Tom  and 
Dick  were  the  original  partners,  and  Harry  came  in  but 
as  an  assistant  to  and  sharer  with  Dick. 


CHAPTER  11. 

RENT  AND  THE  LAW  OF  RENT. 

The  term  rent,  in  its  economic  sense — that  is,  when 
used,  as  I  am  using  it,  to  distinguish  that  part  of  the 
produce  which  accrues  to  the  owners  of  land  or  other 
natural  capabilities  by  virtue  of  their  ownership — differs 
in  meaning  from  the  word  rent  as  commonly  used.  In 
some  respects  this  economic  meaning  is  narrower  than 
the  common  meaning;  in  other  respects  it  is  wider. 

It  is  narrower  in  this:  In  common  speech,  we  apply 
the  word  rent  to  payments  for  the  use  of  buildings,  ma- 
chinery, fixtures,  etc.,  as  well  as  to  payments  for  the  use 
of  land  or  other  natural  capabilities;  and  in  speaking  of 
the  rent  of  a  house  or  the  rent  of  a  farm,  we  do  not 
separate  the  price  for  the  use  of  the  improvements  from 
the  price  for  the  use  of  the  bare  land.  But  in  the  eco- 
nomic meaning  of  rent,  payments  for  the  use  of  any  of  the 
products  of  human  exertion  are  excluded,  and  of  the 
lumped  payments  for  the  use  of  houses,  farms,  etc.,  only 
that  part  is  rent  which  constitutes  the  consideration  for 
the  use  of  the  land — that  part  paid  for  the  use  of  build- 
ings or  other  improvements  being  properly  interest,  as  it 
is  a  consideration  for  the  use  of  capital. 

It  is  wider  in  this:  In  common  speech  we  speak  of  rent 
only  when  owner  and  user  are  distinct  persons.  But  in 
the  economic  sense  there  is  also  rent  where  the  same  per- 
son is  both  owner  and  user.  Where  owner  and  user  are 
thus  the  same  person,  whatever  part  of  his  income  he 
might  obtain  by  letting  the  land  to  another  is  rent,  while 
the  return  for  his  labor  and  capital  are  that  part  of  his 


166  THE   LAWS   OF   DISTRIBUTION.  Book  IIL 

income  which  they  would  yield  him  did  he  hire  instead 
of  owning  the  land.  Rent  is  also  expressed  in  a  selling 
price.  When  land  is  purchased,  the  payment  which  is 
made  for  the  ownership,  or  right  to  perpetual  use,  is  rent 
commuted  or  capitalized.  If  I  buy  land  for  a  small  price 
and  hold  it  until  I  can  sell  it  for  a  large  price,  I  have 
become  rich,  not  by  wages  for  my  labor  or  by  interest 
upon  my  capital,  but  by  the  increase  of  rent.  Rent,  in 
short,  is  the  share  in  the  wealth  produced  which  the  ex- 
clusive right  to  the  use  of  natural  capabilities  gives  to 
the  owner.  Wherever  land  has  an  exchange  value  there 
is  rent  in  the  economic  meaning  of  the  term.  Wherever 
land  having  a  value  is  used,  either  by  owner  or  hirer, 
there  is  rent  actual;  wherever  it  is  not  used,  but  still  has 
a  value,  there  is  rent  potential.  It  is  this  capacity  of 
yielding  rent  which  gives  value  to  land.  Until  its  own- 
ership will  confer  some  advantage,  land  has  no  value.* 

Thus  rent  or  land  value  does  not  arise  from  the  pro- 
ductiveness or  utility  of  land.  It  in  no  wise  represents 
any  help  or  advantage  given  to  production,  but  simply 
the  power  of  securing  apart  of  the  results  of  production. 
No  matter  what  are  its  capabilities,  land  can  yield  no 
rent  and  have  no  value  until  some  one  is  willing  to  give 
labor  or  the  results  of  labor  for  the  privilege  of  using  it; 
and  what  any  one  will  thus  give  depends  not  upon  the 
capacity  of  the  land,  but  upon  its  capacity  as  compared 
with  that  of  land  that  can  be  had  for  nothing.  I  may 
have  very  rich  land,  but  it  will  yield  no  rent  and  have  no 
value  so  long  as  there  is  other  land  as  good  to  be  had 
without  cost.  But  when  this  other  land  is  appropriated, 
and  the  best  land  to  be  had  for  nothing  is  inferior,  either 
in  fertility,  situation,  or  other  quality,  my  land  will  begin 

*  In  speaking  of  the  value  of  land  I  use  and  shall  use  the  words 
as  referring  to  the  value  of  the  bare  land.  When  I  wish  to  speak  of 
the  value  of  land  and  improvements  I  shall  use  those  words. 


Chap.  II  KENT  AND  THE  LAW  OP  RENT.  167 

to  have  a  value  and  yield  rent.  And  though  the  pro- 
ductiveness of  my  land  may  decrease,  yet  if  the  produc- 
tiveness of  the  land  to  be  had  without  charge  decreases 
in  greater  proportion,  the  rent  I  can  get,  and  conse- 
quently the  value  of  my  land,  will  steadily  increase. 
Rent,  in  short,  is  the  price  of  monopoly,  arising  from  the 
reduction  to  individual  ownership  of  natural  elements 
which  human  exertion  can  neither  produce  nor  increase. 
If  one  man  owned  all  the  laud  accessible  to  any  com- 
munity, he  could,  of  course,  demand  any  price  or  condi- 
tion for  its  use  that  he  saw  fit;  and,  as  long  as  his  owner- 
ship was  acknowledged,  the  other  members  of  the  com- 
munity would  have  but  death  or  emigration  as  the  alter- 
native to  submission  to  his  terms.  This  has  been  the 
case  in  many  communities;  but  in  the  modern  form  of 
society,  the  land,  though  generally  reduced  to  individ- 
ual ownership,  is  in  the  hands  of  too  many  different  per- 
sons to  permit  the  price  which  can  be  obtained  for  its 
use  to  be  fixed  by  mere  caprice  or  desire.  While  each 
individual  owner  tries  to  get  all  he  can,  there  is  a  limit 
to  what  he  can  get,  which  constitutes  the  market  price 
or  market  rent  of  the  land,  and  which  varies  with  differ- 
ent lands  and  at  different  times.  The  law,  or  relation, 
which,  under  these  circumstances  of  free  competition 
among  all  parties,  the  condition  which  in  tracing  out  the 
principles  of  political  economy  is  always  to  be  assumed, 
determines  what  rent  or  price  can  be  got  by  the  owner, 
is  styled  the  law  of  rent.  This  fixed  with  certainty,  we 
have  more  than  a  starting  point  from  which  the  laws 
which  regulate  wages  and  interest  may  be  traced.  For, 
as  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  a  division,  in  ascertaining 
what  fixes  the  share  of  the  produce  which  goes  as  rent, 
we  also  ascertain  what  fixes  the  share  which  is  left  for 
wages,  where  there  is  no  co-operation  of  capital;  and  what 
fixes  the  joint  share  left  for  wages  and  interest,  where 
capital  does  co-operate  in  production. 


"UBS  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  III. 

Fortunately,  as  to  the  law  of  rent  there  is  no  necessity 
for  discussion.  Authority  here  coincides  with  common 
sense,*  and  the  accepted  dictum  of  the  current  political 
economy  has  the  self-evident  character  of  a  geometric 
axiom.  This  accepted  law  of  rent,  which  John  Stuart 
Mill  denominates  the  ^ows  asinorumot  political  economy, 
is  sometimes  styled  "Ricardo's  law  of  rent,"  from  the 
fact  that,  although  not  the  first  to  announce  it,  he  first 
brought  it  prominently  into  notice,  f     It  is: 

The  rent  of  land  is  determined  by  the  excess  of  its 
produce  over  that  which  the  same  application  can  secure 
from  the  least  productive  land  in  use. 

This  law,  which  of  course  applies  to  land  used  for 
other  purposes  than  agriculture,  and  to  all  natural 
agencies,  such  as  mines,  fisheries,  etc.,  has  been  exhaust- 
ively explained  and  illustrated  by  all  the  leading  econo- 
mists since  Ricardo.  But  its  mere  statement  has  all  the 
force  of  a  self-evident  proposition,  for  it  is  clear  that  the 
effect  of  competition  is  to  make  the  lowest  reward  for 
which  labor  and  capital  will  engage  in  production,  the 
highest  that  they  can  claim;  and  hence  to  enable  the 
owner  of  more  productive  land  to  appropriate  in  rent  all 

*  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  accepted  law  of  rent  has  never 
been  disputed.  In  all  the  nonsense  that  in  the  present  disjointed 
condition  of  the  science  has  been  printed  as  political  economy,  it 
would  be  hard  to  find  anything  that  has  not  been  disputed.  But  I 
mean  to  say  that  it  has  the  sanction  of  all  economic  writers  who  are 
really  to  be  regarded  as  authority.  As  John  Stuart  Mill  says  (Book 
II.,  Chap.  XVI.).  "there  are  few  persons  who  have  refused  their 
assent  to  it,  except  from  not  having  thoroughly  understood  it.  The 
loose  and  inaccurate  way  in  which  it  is  often  apprehended  by  those 
who  af[ect  to  refute  it  is  very  remarkable."  An  observation  which 
has  received  many  later  exemplifications. 

\  According  to  McCulloch  the  law  of  rent  was  first  stated  in  a 
pamphlet  by  Dr.  James  Anderson  of  Edinburgh  in  1777,  and  simul- 
taneously in  the  beginning  of  this  century  by  Sir  Edward  West,  Mn 
Malthus,  and  Mr.  Ricardo. 


Chap.n.  KENT  AND  THE   LAW   OF  RElTr.  169 

the  return  above  that  required  to  recompense  labor  and 
capital  at  the  ordinary  rate — that  is  to  say,  what  they  can 
obtain  upon  the  least  productive  land  in  use,  or  at  the 
least  productive  point,  where,  of  course,  no  rent  is  paid. 

Perhaps  it  may  conduce  to  a  fuller  understanding  ot 
the  law  of  rent  to  put  it  in  this  form:  The  ownership  of 
a  natural  agent  of  production  will  give  the  power  of  ap- 
propriating so  much  of  the  wealth  produced  by  the  exer- 
tion of  labor  and  capital  upon  it  as  exceeds  the  return 
which  the  same  application  of  labor  and  capital  could 
secure  in  the  least  productive  occupation  in  which  they 
freely  engage. 

This,  however,  amounts  to  precisely  the  same  thing, 
for  there  is  no  occupation  in  which  labor  and  capital  can 
engage  which  does  not  require  the  use  of  land;  and,  fur- 
thermore, the  cultivation  or  other  use  of  land  will  always 
be  carried  to  as  low  a  point  of  remuneration,  all  things 
considered,  as  is  freely  accepted  in  any  other  pursuit. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  a  community  in  which  part  of  the 
labor  and  capital  is  devoted  to  agriculture  and  part  to 
manufactures.  The  poorest  land  cultivated  yields  an 
average  return  which  we  will  call  20,  and  20  there- 
fore will  be  the  average  return  to  labor  and  capital,  as 
well  in  manufactures  as  in  agriculture.  Suppose  that 
from  some  permanent  cause  the  return  in  manufactures 
is  now  reduced  to  15.  Clearly,  the  labor  and  capital 
engaged  in  manufactures  will  turn  to  agriculture;  and 
the  process  will  not  stop  until,  either  by  the  extension  of 
cultivation  to  inferior  lands  or  to  inferior  points  on  the 
same  land,  or  by  an  increase  in  the  relative  value  of  man- 
ufactured products,  owing  to  the  diminution  of  produc- 
tion— or,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  by  both  processes — the  yield 
to  labor  and  capital  in  both  pursuits  has,  all  things  con- 
sidered, been  brought  again  to  the  same  level,  so  that 
whatever  be  the  final  point  of  productiveness  at  which 
manufactures  are  still   carried    on,   whether   it  be    18 


170  THE  LAWS   OF   DISTRIBUTION".  Book  III 

or  17  or  16,  cultivation  will  also  be  extended  to  that 
point.  And,  thus,  to  say  that  rent  will  be  the  excess 
in  productiveness  over  the  yield  at  the  margin,  or 
lowest  point,  of  cultivation,  is  the  same  thing  as  to  say 
that  it  will  be  the  excess  of  produce  over  what  the  same 
amount  of  labor  and.  capital  obtains  in  the  least  remuner- 
ative occupation. 

The  law  of  rent  is,  in  fact,  but  a  deduction  from  the 
law  of  competition,  and  amounts  simply  to  the  assertion 
that  as  wages  and  interest  tend  to  a  common  level,  all 
that  part  of  the  general  production  of  wealth  which  ex- 
ceeds what  the  labor  and  capital  employed  could  have 
secured  for  themselves,  if  applied  to  the  poorest  natural 
agent  in  use,  will  go  to  land  owners  in  the  shape  of  rent. 
It  rests,  in  the  last  analysis,  upon  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple, which  is  to  political  economy  what  the  attraction 
of  gravitation  is  to  physics — that  men  will  seek  to  gratify 
their  desires  with  the  least  exertion. 

This,  then,  is  the  law  of  rent.  Although  many  stand- 
ard treatises  follow  too  much  the  example  of  Ricardo, 
who  seems  to  view  it  merely  in  its  relation  to  agriculture, 
and  in  several  places  speaks  of  manufactures  yielding  no 
rent,  when,  in  truth,  manufactures  and  exchange  yield 
the  highest  rents,  as  is  evinced  by  the  greater  value  of 
land  in  manufacturing  and  commercial  cities,  thus  hid- 
ing the  full  importance  of  the  law,  yet,  ever  since  the 
time  of  Ricardo,  the  law  itself  has  been  clearly  appre- 
hended and  fully  recognized.  But  not  so  its  corollaries. 
Plain  as  they  are,  the  accepted  doctrine  of  wages  (backed 
and  fortified  not  only  as  has  been  hitherto  explained, 
but  by  considerations  whose  enormous  weight  will  be  seen 
when  the  logical  conclusion  toward  which  we  are  tending 
is  reached)  has  hitherto   prevented  their  recognition.* 

•Buckle  (Chap.  II.,  History  of  Civilization)  recognizes  the  neces- 
sary relation  between  rent,  interest,  and  wages,  but  evidently  never 
worked  it  out. 


Chap.  II.  RENT  AlfD   THE  LAW   OF  RENT.  171 

Yet,  is  it  not  as  plain  as  the  simplest  geometrical  demon- 
stration, that  the  corollary  of  the  law  of  rent  is  the  law 
of  wages,  where  the  division  of  the  produce  is  simply  be- 
tween rent  and  wages;  or  the  law  of  wages  and  interest 
taken  together,  where  the  division  is  into  rent,  wages, 
and  interest?  Stated  reversely,  the  law  of  rent  is  neces- 
sarily the  law  of  wages  and  interest  taken  together,  for 
it  is  the  assertion,  that  no  matter  what  be  the  production 
which  results  from  the  application  of  labor  and  capital, 
these  two  factors  will  receive  in  wages  and  interest  only 
such  part  of  the  produce  as  they  could  have  produced  on 
land  free  to  them  without  fhe  payment  of  rent — that  is, 
the  least  productive  land  or  point  in  use.  For,  if,  of  the 
produce,  all  over  the  amount  which  labor  and  capital 
could  secure  from  land  for  which  no  rent  is  paid  must  go 
to  land  owners  as  rent,  then  all  that  can  be  claimed  by 
labor  and  capital  as  wages  and  interest  is  the  amount 
which  they  could  have  secured  from  land  yielding  no  rent. 

Or  to  put  it  in  algebraic  form: 

As  Produce =Kent-|-Wages4- Interest, 

Therefore,  Produce — Rent=Wages+Intere8t. 

Thus  wages  and  interest  do  not  depend  upon  the  prod- 
uce of  labor  and  capital,  but  upon  what  is  left  after 
rent  is  taken  out;  or,  upon  the  produce  which  they  could 
obtain  without  paying  rent — that  is,  from  the  poorest 
land  in  use.  And  hence,  no  matter  what  be  the  increase 
in  productive  power,  if  the  increase  in  rent  keeps  pace 
with  it,  neither  wages  nor  interest  can  increase. 

The  moment  this  simple  relation  is  recognized,  a  flood 
of  light  streams  in  upon  what  was  before  inexplicable, 
and  seemingly  discordant  facts  range  themselves  under 
an  obvious  law.  The  increase  of  rent  which  goes  on  in 
progressive  countries  is  at  once  seen  to  be  the  key  which 
explains  why  wages  and  interest  fail  to  increase  with  in- 
crease of  productive  power.  For  the  wealth  produced 
in  every  community  is  divided  into  two  parts  by  what 


172  THE   LAWS  OF   DISTRIBUTION.  Book  HI. 

may  be  called  the  rent  line,  which  is  fixed  by  the  margin 
of  cultivation,  or  the  return  which  labor  and  capital  could 
obtain  from  such  natural  opportunities  as  are  free  to 
them  without  the  payment  of  rent.  From  the  part  of 
the  produce  below  this  line  wages  and  interest  must  be 
paid.  All  that  is  above  goes  to  the  owners  of  land. 
Thus,  where  the  value  of  land  is  low,  there  may  be  a 
small  production  of  wealth,  and  yet  a  high  rate  of  wages 
and  interest,  as  we  see  in  new  countries.  And,  where  the 
value  of  land  is  high,  there  may  be  a  very  large  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  and  yet  a  low  rate  of  wages  and  interest, 
as  we  see  in  old  countries.  And,  where  productive  power 
increases,  as  it  is  increasing  in  all  progressive  countries, 
wages  and  interest  will  be  affected,  not  by  the  increase, 
but  by  the  manner  in  which  rent  is  affected.  If  the 
value  of  land  increases  proportionately,  all  the  increased 
production  will  be  swallowed  up  by  rent,  and  wages  and 
interest  will  remain  as  before.  If  the  value  of  land  in- 
creases in  greater  ratio  than  productive  power,  rent  will 
swallow  up  even  more  than  the  increase;  and  while  the 
produce  of  labor  and  capital  will  be  much  larger,  wages 
and  interest  will  fall.  It  is  only  when  the  value  of  land 
fails  to  increase  as  rapidly  as  productive  power,  that  wages 
and  interest  can  increase  with  the  increase  of  productive 
power.    All  this  is  exemplified  in  actual  fact. 


J 


CHAPTER  III. 

OP  INTEREST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  INTEBE8T. 

Haying  made  sure  of  the  law  of  rent,  we  have  ob- 
tained as  its  necessary  corollary  the  law  of  wages,  where 
the  division  is  between  rent  and  wages;  and  the  law  of 
wages  and  interest  taken  together,  where  the  division  is 
between  the  three  factors.  What  proportion  of  the  prod- 
uce is  taken  as  rent  must  determine  what  proportion  is 
left  for  wages,  if  but  land  and  labor  are  concerned;  or  to 
be  divided  between  wages  and  interest,  if  capital  joins  in 
the  production. 

But  without  reference  to  this  deduction,  let  us  seek 
each  of  these  laws  separately  and  independently.  If, 
when  obtained  in  this  way,  we  find  that  they  correlate, 
our  conclusions  will  have  the  highest  certainty. 

And,  inasmuch  as  the  discovery  of  the  law  of  wages  is 
the  ultimate  purpose  of  our  inquiry,  let  us  take  up  first 
the  subject  of  interest. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  difference  in  meaning 
between  the  terms  profits  and  interest.  It  may  be  worth 
while,  further,  to  say  that  interest,  as  an  abstract  term  in 
the  distribution  of  wealth,  differs  in  meaning  from  the 
word  as  commonly  used,  in  this:  That  it  includes  all  re- 
turns for  the  use  of  capital,  and  not  merely  those  that 
pass  from  borrower  to  lender;  and  that  it  excludes  com- 
pensation for  risk,  which  forms  so  great  a  part  of  what  is 
commonly  called  interest.  Compensation  for  risk  is  evi- 
dently only  an  equalization  of  return  between  different 
employments  of  capital.  What  we  want  to  find  is,  what 
fixes  the  general  rate  of  interest  proper?    The  different 


174  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Booh  IIL 

rates  of  compensation  for  risk  added  to  this  will  give  the 
current  rates  of  commercial  interest. 

Now,  it  is  evident  that  the  greatest  differences  in  what 
is  ordinarily  called  interest  are  due  to  differences  in  risk; 
but  it  is  also  evident  that  between  different  countries  and 
different  times  there  are  also  considerable  variations  in 
the  rate  of  interest  proper.  In  California  at  one  time 
two  per  cent,  a  month  would  not  have  been  considered 
extravagant  interest  on  security  on  which  loans  could 
now  be  effected  at  seven  or  eight  per  cent,  per  annum, 
and  though  some  part  of  the  difference  may  be  due  to  an 
increased  sense  of  general  stability,  the  greater  part  is 
evidently  due  to  some  other  general  cause.  In  the 
United  States  generally  the  rate  of  interest  has  been 
higher  than  in  England;  and  in  the  newer  States  of  the 
Union  higher  than  in  the  older  States;  and  the  tendency 
of  interest  to  sink  as  society  progresses  is  well  marked 
and  has  long  been  noticed.  "What  is  the  law  which  will 
bind  all  these  variations  together  and  exhibit  their  cause? 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  dwell  more  than  has  hitherto 
incidentally  been  done  upon  the  failure  of  the  current 
political  economy  to  determine  the  true  law  of  interest. 
Its  speculations  upon  this  subject  have  not  the  definite- 
ness  and  coherency  which  have  enabled  the  accepted  doc- 
trine of  wages  to  withstand  the  evidence  of  fact,  and  do 
not  require  the  same  elaborate  review.  That  they  run 
counter  to  the  facts  is  evident.  That  interest  does  not 
depend  on  the  productiveness  of  labor  and  capital  is 
proved  by  the  general  fact  that  where  labor  and  capital 
are  most  productive  interest  is  lowest.  That  it  does  not 
depend  reversely  upon  wages  (or  the  cost  of  labor),  low- 
ering as  wages  rise,  and  increasing  as  wages  fall,  is  proved 
by  the  general  fact  that  interest  is  high  when  and  where 
wages  are  high,  and  low  when  and  where  wages  are  low. 

Let  us  begin  at  the  beginning.  The  nature  and  func- 
tions of  capital  have  already  been  sufficiently  shown,  but 


Chap,  in,     INTEEEST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  INTEREST.         175 

even  at  the  risk  of  something  like  a  digression,  let  us 
endeavor  to  ascertain  the  cause  of  interest  before  consid- 
ering its  law.  For  in  addition  to  aiding  our  inquiry  by 
giving  us  a  firmer  and  clearer  grasp  of  the  subject  now 
in  hand,  it  may  lead  to  conclusions  whose  practical  im- 
portance will  be  hereafter  apparent. 

What  is  the  reason  and  justification  of  interest?  Why 
should  the  borrower  pay  back  to  the  lender  more  than 
he  received?  These  questions  are  worth  answering,  not 
merely  from  their  speculative,  but  from  their  practical 
importance.  The  feeling  that  interest  is  the  robbery  of 
industry  is  widespread  and  growing,  and  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  shows  itself  more  and  more  in  popular  liter- 
ature and  in  popular  movements.  The  expounders  of 
the  current  political  economy  say  that  there  is  no  conflict 
between  labor  and  capital,  and  oppose  as  injurious  to 
labor,  as  well  as  to  capital,  all  schemes  for  restricting  the 
reward  which  capital  obtains;  yet  in  the  same  works  the 
doctrine  is  laid  down  that  wages  and  interest  bear  to  each 
other  an  inverse  relation,  and  that  interest  will  be  low  or 
high  as  wages  are  high  or  low.*  Clearly,  then,  if  this 
doctrine  is  correct,  the  only  objection  that  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  laborer  can  be  logically  made  to  any 
scheme  for  the  reduction  of  interest  is  that  it  will  not 
work,  which  is  manifestly  very  weak  ground  while  ideas 
of  the  omnipotence  of  legislatures  are  yet  so  widespread; 
and  though  such  an  objection  may  lead  to  the  abandon- 
ment of  any  one  particular  scheme,  it  will  not  prevent 
the  search  for  another. 

Why  should  interest  be?  Interest,  we  are  told,  in  all 
the  standard  works,  is  the  reward  of  abstinence.  But, 
manifestly,  this  does  not  sufficiently  account  for  it.  Ab- 
stinence is  not  an  active,  but  a  passive  quality;  it  is  not  a 

*  This  is  really  said  of  profits,  but  with  the  evident  meaning  of 
returns  to  capital 


176  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  III. 

doing — it  is  simply  a  not  doing.  Abstinence  in  itself 
produces  nothing.  Why,  then,  should  any  part  of  what 
is  produced  be  claimed  for  it?  If  I  have  a  sum  of  money 
which  I  lock  up  for  a  year,  I  have  exercised  as  much  ab- 
stinence as  though  I  had  loaned  it.  Yet,  though  in  the 
latter  case  I  will  expect  it  to  be  returned  to  me  with  an 
additional  sum  by  way  of  interest,  in  the  former  I  will 
have  but  the  same  sum,  and  no  increase.  But  the  ab- 
stinence is  the  same.  If  it  be  said  that  in  lending  it  I 
do  the  borrower  a  service,  it  may  be  replied  that  he  also 
does  me  a  service  in  keeping  it  safely — a  service  that 
under  some  conditions  may  be  very  valuable,  and  for 
which  I  would  willingly  pay,  rather  than  not  have  it; 
and  a  service  which,  as  to  some  forms  of  capital,  may  be 
even  more  obvious  than  as  to  money.  For  there  are 
many  forms  of  capital  which  will  not  keep,  but  must  be 
constantly  renewed;  and  many  which  are  onerous  to 
maintain  if  one  has  no  immediate  use  for  them.  So,  if 
the  accumulator  of  capital  helps  the  user  of  capital  by 
loaning  it  to  him,  does  not  the  user  discharge  the  debt 
in  full  when  he  hands  it  back?  Is  not  the  secure  preser- 
vation, the  maintenance,  the  re-creation  of  capital,  a 
complete  offset  to  the  use?  Accumulation  is  the  end 
and  aim  of  abstinence.  Abstinence  can  go  no  further 
and  accomplish  no  more;  nor  of  itself  can  it  even  do 
this.  If  we  were  merely  to  abstain  from  using  it,  how 
much  wealth  would  disappear  in  a  year!  And  how  little 
would  be  left  at  the  end  of  two  years!  Hence,  if  more  is 
demanded  for  abstinence  than  the  safe  return  of  capital, 
is  not  labor  wronged?  Such  ideas  as  these  underlie  the 
widespread  opinion  that  interest  can  accrue  only  at  the 
expense  of  labor,  and  is  in  fact  a  robbery  of  labor  which 
in  a  social  condition  based  on  justice  would  be  abolished. 
The  attempts  to  refute  these  views  do  not  appear  to  me 
always  successful.  For  instance,  as  it  illustrates  the 
usual  reasoning,  take  Bastiat's  oft-quoted  illustration  of 


Chap.UI:     INTEBEST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  LCTTEBEST.         177 

the  plane.  One  carpenter,  James,  at  the  expense  of 
ten  days'  labor,  makes  himself  a  plane,  which  will  last 
in  use  for  290  of  the  300  working  days  of  the  year. 
William,  another  carpenter,  proposes  to  borrow  the 
plane  for  a  year,  offering  to  give  back  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  when  the  plane  will  be  worn  out,  a  new 
plane  equally  as  good.  James  objects  to  lending  the 
plane  on  these  terms,  urging  that  if  he  merely  gets  back 
a  plane  he  will  have  nothing  to  compensate  him  for  the 
loss  of  the  advantage  which  the  use  of  the  plane  during 
the  year  would  give  him.  William,  admitting  this, 
agrees  not  merely  to  return  a  plane,  but,  in  addition,  to 
give  James  a  new  plank.  The  agreement  is  carried  out 
to  mutual  satisfaction.  The  plane  is  used  up  during  the 
year,  but  at  the  end  of  the  year  James  receives  as  good 
a  one,  and  a  plank  in  addition.  He  lends  the  new  plane 
again  and  again,  until  finally  it  passes  into  the  hands  of 
his  son,  "who  still  continues  to  lend  it,"  receiving  a 
plank  each  time.  This  plank,  which  represents  interest, 
is  said  to  be  a  natural  and  equitable  remuneration,  as  by 
giving  it  in  return  for  the  use  of  the  plane,  William 
**obtains  the  power  which  exists  in  the  tool  to  increase 
the  productiveness  of  labor,"  and  is  no  worse  off  than  he 
would  have  been  had  he  not  borrowed  the  plane;  while 
James  obtains  no  more  than  he  would  have  had  if  he  had 
retained  and  used  the  plane  instead  of  lending  it. 

Is  this  really  so?  It  will  be  observed  that  it  is  not 
affirmed  that  James  could  make  the  plane  and  William 
could  not,  for  that  would  be  to  make  the  plank  the  re- 
ward of  superior  skill.  It  is  only  that  James  had  ab- 
stained from  consuming  the  result  of  his  labor  until  he 
had  accumulated  it  in  the  form  of  a  plane — which  is  the 
essential  idea  of  capital. 

Now,  if  James  had  not  lent  the  plane  he  could  have 
used  it  for  290  days,  when  it  would  have  been  worn  out, 
and  he  would  have  been  obliged  to  take  the  remaimng 


178  IHB  LAWS  OP  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  UL 

ten  days  of  the  working  year  to  make  a  new  plane.  If 
William  had  not  borrowed  the  plane  he  would  have  taken 
ten  days  to  make  himself  a  plane,  which  he  could  have 
used  for  the  remaining  290  days.  Thus,  if  we  take  a 
plank  to  represent  the  fruits  of  a  day's  labor  with  the 
aid  of  a  plane,  at  the  end  of  the  year,  had  no  borrowing 
taken  place,  each  would  have  stood  with  reference  to  the 
plane  as  he  commenced,  James  with  a  plane,  and  William 
with  none,  and  each  would  have  had  as  the  result  of  the 
year's  work  290  planks.  If  the  condition  of  the  borrow- 
ing had  been  what  William  first  proposed,  the  return  of 
a  new  plane,  the  same  relative  situation  would  have  been 
secured.  William  would  have  worked  for  290  days,  and 
taken  the  last  ten  days  to  make  the  new  plane  to  return 
to  James.  James  would  have  taken  the  first  ten  days  of 
the  year  to  make  another  plane  which  would  have  lasted 
for  290  days,  when  he  would  have  received  a  new  plane 
from  William.  Thus,  the  simple  return  of  the  plane 
would  have  put  each  in  the  same  position  at  the  end  of 
the  year  as  if  no  borrowing  had  taken  place.  James 
would  have  lost  nothing  to  the  gain  of  William,  and  Will- 
iam would  have  gained  nothing  to  the  loss  of  James. 
Each  would  have  had  the  return  his  labor  would  other- 
wise have  yielded — viz.,  290  planks,  and  James  would 
have  had  the  advantage  with  which  he  started,  a  new 
piane. 

But  when,  in  addition  to  the  return  of  a  plane,  a 
plank  is  given,  James  at  the  end  of  the  year  will  be  in  a 
better  position  than  if  there  had  been  no  borrowing,  and 
William  in  a  worse.  James  will  have  291  planks  and  a 
new  plane,  and  William  289  planks  and  no  plane.  If 
William  now  borrows  the  plank  as  well  as  the  plane  on  the 
same  terms  as  before,  he  will  at  the  end  of  the  year  have 
to  return  to  James  a  plane,  two  planks  and  a  fraction 
of  a  plank;  and  if  this  difference  be  again  borrowed,  and 
10  on,  is  it  not  evident  that  the  income  of  the  one  will 


Chap.UL    INTEREST  AKD  THE  CAUSB  OF  rSTTEREST.  179 

progressively  decline,  and  that  of  the  other  will  progress- 
ively increase,  nntil  at  length,  if  the  operation  be  con- 
tinued, the  time  will  come  when,  as  the  result  of  the 
original  lending  of  a  plane,  James  will  obtain  the  whole 
result  of  William's  labor — that  is  to  say,  William  will  bo- 
come  virtually  his  slave? 

Is  interest,  then,  natural  and  equitable?  There  is 
nothing  in  this  illustration  to  show  it  to  be.  Evidently 
what  Bastiat  (and  many  others)  assigns  as  the  basis  of 
interest,  "the  power  which  exists  in  the  tool  to  increase 
the  productiveness  of  labor,'*  is  neither  in  justice  nor  in 
fact  the  basis  of  interest.  The  fallacy  which  makes 
Bastiat's  illustration  pass  as  conclusive  with  those  who 
do  not  stop  to  analyze  it,  as  we  have  done,  is  that  with 
the  loan  of  the  plane  they  associate  the  transfer  of  the 
increased  productive  power  which  a  plane  gives  to  labor. 
But  this  is  really  not  involved.  The  essential  thing 
which  James  loaned  to  William  was  not  the  increased 
power  which  labor  acquires  from  using  planes.  To  sup- 
pose this,  we  should  have  to  suppose  that  the  making 
and  using  of  planes  was  a  trade  secret  or  a  patent  right, 
when  the  illustration  would  become  one  of  monopoly, 
not  of  capital.  The  essential  thing  which  James  loaned 
to  William  was  not  the  privilege  of  applying  his  labor  in 
a  more  effective  way,  but  the  use  of  the  concrete  result  of 
ten  days*  labor.  If  "the  power  which  exists  in  tools  to 
increase  the  productiveness  of  labor'*  were  the  cause  of 
interest,  then  the  rate  of  interest  would  increase  with 
the  march  of  invention.  This  is  not  so.  Nor  yet  will  I 
be  expected  to  pay  more  interest  if  I  borrow  a  fifty-dollar 
*  sewing  machine  than  if  I  borrow  fifty  dollars'  worth  of 
needles;  if  I  borrow  a  steam  engine  than  if  I  borrow  a 
pile  of  bricks  of  equal  value.  Capital,  like  wealth,  is 
interchangeable.  It  is  not  one  thing;  it  is  anything  to 
that  value  within  the  circle  of  exchange.  Nor  yet  does 
the  improvement  of  tools  add  to  the  reproductive  power 
of  capital;  it  adds  to  the  productive  power  of  labor. 


IBD  THE  LAWS   OF   DISTRIBUTION.    .  Book  m. 

And  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  if  all  wealth  consisted 
of  such  things  as  planes,  and  all  production  was  such  as 
that  of  carpenters — that  is  to  say,  if  wealth  consisted  but 
of  the  inert  matter  of  the  universe,  and  production  of 
working  up  this  inert  matter  into  different  shapes,  that 
interest  would  be  but  the  robbery  of  industry,  and  could 
not  long  exist.  This  is  not  to  say  that  there  would  be  no 
accumulation,  for  though  the  hope  of  increase  is  a 
motive  for  turning  wealth  into  capital,  it  is  not  the 
motive,  or,  at  least,  not  the  main  motive,  for  accumulat- 
ing. Children  will  save  their  pennies  for  Christmas; 
pirates  will  add  to  their  buried  treasure;  Eastern  princes 
will  accumulate  hoards  of  coin;  and  men  like  Stewart  or 
Vanderbilt,  having  become  once  possessed  of  the  passion 
of  accumulating,  would  continue  as  long  as  they  could  to 
add  to  their  millions,  even  though  accumulation  brought 
no  increase.  Nor  yet  is  it  to  say  that  there  would  be  no 
borrowing  or  lending,  for  this,  to  a  large  extent,  would 
be  prompted  by  mutual  convenience.  If  "William  had  a 
job  of  work  to  be  immediately  begun  and  James  one  that 
would  not  commence  until  ten  days  thereafter,  there 
might  be  a  mutual  advantage  in  the  loan  of  the  plane, 
though  no  plank  should  be  given. 

But  all  wealth  is  not  of  the  nature  of  planes,  or  planks, 
or  money,  which  has  no  reproductive  power;  nor  is  all 
production  merely  the  turning  into  other  forms  of  this 
inert  matter  of  the  universe.  It  is  true  that  if  I  put 
away  money,  it  will  not  increase.  But  suppose,  instead, 
I  put  away  wine.  At  the  end  of  a  year  I  will  have  an 
increased  value,  for  the  wine  will  have  improved  in 
quality.  Or  supposing  that  in  a  country  adapted  to 
them,  I  set  out  bees;  at  the  end  of  a  year  I  will  have 
more  swarms  of  bees,  and  the  honey  which  they  have 
made.  Or,  supposing,  where  there  is  a  range,  I  turn  out 
sheep,  or  hogs,  or  cattle;  at  the  end  of  the  year  I  will, 
upon  the  average,  also  have  an  increase. 


Chap.ni.    INTEREST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  INTEREST.  181 

Now  what  gives  the  increase  in  these  cases  is  some- 
thing which,  though  it  generally  requires  labor  to  utilize 
it,  is  yet  distinct  and  separable  from  labor — the  active 
power  of  nature;  the  principle  of  growth,  of  reproduc- 
tion, which  everywhere  characterizes  all  the  forms  of 
that  mysterious  thing  or  condition  whicli  we  call  life. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  this  which  is  the  cause  of 
interest,  or  the  increase  of  capital  over  and  above  that 
due  to  labor.  There  are,  so  to  speak,  in  the  movements 
which  make  up  the  everlasting  flux  of  nature,  certain 
vital  currents,  which  will,  if  we  use  them,  aid  us,  with  a 
force  independent  of  our  own  efforts,  in  turning  matter 
into  the  forms  we  desire — that  is  to  say,  into  wealth. 

While  many  things  might  be  mentioned  which,  like 
money,  or  planes,  or  planks,  or  engines,  or  clothing, 
have  no  innate  power  of  increase,  yet  other  things  are 
included  in  the  terms  wealth  and  capital  which,  like 
wine,  will  of  themselves  increase  in  quality  up  to  a  cer- 
tain point;  or,  like  bees  or  cattle,  will  of  themselves  in- 
crease in  quantity;  and  certain  other  things,  such  as 
seeds,  which,  though  the  conditions  which  enable  them 
to  increase  may  not  be  maintained  without  labor,  yet 
will,  when  these  conditions  are  maintained,  yield  an  in- 
crease, or  give  a  return  over  and  above  that  which  is  to 
be  attributed  to  labor. 

Now  the  interchangeability  of  wealth  necessarily  in- 
volves an  average  between  all  the  species  of  wealth  of 
any  special  advantage  which  accrues  from  the  possession 
of  any  particular  species,  for  no  one  would  keep  capital 
in  one  form  when  it  could  be  changed  into  a  more  ad- 
vantageous form.  No  one,  for  instance,  would  grind 
wheat  into  flour  and  keep  it  on  hand  for  the  convenience 
of  those  who  desire  from  time  to  time  to  exchange  wheat 
or  its  equivalent  for  flour,  unless  he  could  by  such  ex- 
change secure  an  increase  equal  to  that  which,  all  things 
considered,  he  could  secure  by  planting  his  wheat.    Nq 


182  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  UI. 

one,  if  he  could  keep  them,  would  exchange  a  flock  of 
sheep  now  for  their  net  weight  in  mutton  to  be  returned 
next  year;  for  by  keeping  the  sheep  he  would  not  only 
have  the  same  amount  of  mutton  next  year,  but  also  the 
lambs  and  the  fleeces.  No  one  would  dig  an  irrigating 
ditch,  unless  those  who  by  its  aid  are  enabled  to  utilize 
the  reproductive  forces  of  nature  would  give  him  such 
a  portion  of  the  increase  they  receive  as  to  make  his  cap- 
ital yield  him  as  much  as  theirs.  And  so,  in  any  cir- 
cle of  exchange,  the  power  of  increase  which  the  repro- 
ductive or  vital  force  of  nature  gives  to  some  species  of 
capital  must  average  with  all;  and  he  who  lends,  or  uses 
in  exchange,  money,  or  planes,  or  bricks,  or  clothing,  is 
not  deprived  of  the  power  to  obtain  an  increase,  any 
more  than  if  he  had  lent  or  put  to  a  reproductive  use  so 
much  capital  in  a  form  capable  of  increase. 

There  is  also  in  the  utilization  of  the  variations  in  the 
powers  of  nature  and  of  man  which  is  effected  by  ex- 
change, an  increase  which  somewhat  resembles  that  pro- 
duced by  the  vital  forces  of  nature.  In  one  place,  for 
instance,  a  given  amount  of  labor  will  secure  200  in 
vegetable  food  or  100  in  animal  food.  In  another  place, 
these  conditions  are  reversed,  and  the  same  amount  of 
labor  will  produce  100  in  vegetable  food  or  200  in  ani- 
mal. In  the  one  place,  the  relative  value  of  vegetable 
to  animal  food  will  be  as  two  to  one,  and  in  the  other  as 
one  to  two;  and,  supposing  equal  amounts  of  each  to  be  re- 
quired, the  same  amount  of  labor  will  in  either  place  secure 
150  of  both.  But  by  devoting  labor  in  the  one  place  to 
the  procurement  of  vegetable  food,  and  in  the  other,  to 
the  procurement  of  animal  food,  and  exchanging  to  the 
quantity  required,  the  people  of  each  place  will  be  en- 
abled by  the  given  amount  of  labor  to  procure  200 
of  both,  less  the  losses  and  expenses  of  exchange;  so 
that  in  each  place  the  produce  wliich  is  taken  from 
use  and  devoted  to  exchange  brings  back  an  increase. 


Chap.m.    INTEREST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  INTEREST.  183 

Thus  Whittington's  cat,  sent  to  a  far  country  where  cats 
are  scarce  and  rats  are  plenty,  returns  in  bales  of  goods 
and  bags  of  gold. 

Of  course,  labor  is  necessary  to  exchange,  as  it  is  to 
the  utilization  of  the  reproductive  forces  of  nature,  and 
the  produce  of  exchange,  as  the  produce  of  agriculture, 
is  clearly  the  produce  of  labor;  but  yet,  in  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other,  there  is  a  distinguishable  force  co-operat- 
ing with  that  of  labor,  which  makes  it  impossible  to 
measure  the  result  solely  by  the  amount  of  labor  ex- 
pended, but  renders  the  amount  of  capital  and  the  time 
it  is  in  use  integral  parts  in  the  sum  of  forces.  Capital 
aids  labor  in  all  of  the  different  modes  of  production,  but 
there  is  a  distinction  between  the  relations  of  the  two  in 
such  modes  of  production  as  consist  merely  of  changing 
the  form  or  place  of  matter,  as  planing  boards  or  mining 
coal;  and  such  modes  of  production  as  avail  themselves 
of  the  reproductive  forces  of  nature,  or  of  the  power 
of  increase  arising  from  differences  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  natural  and  human  powers,  such  as  the  raising  of 
grain  or  the  exchange  of  ice  for  sugar.  In  production 
of  the  first  kind,  labor  alone  is  the  efficient  cause;  when 
labor  stops,  production  stops.  When  the  carpenter 
drops  his  plane  as  the  sun  sets,  the  increase  of  value, 
which  he  with  his  plane  is  producing,  ceases  until  he  be- 
gins his  labor  again  the  following  morning.  When  the 
factory  bell  rings  for  closing,  when  the  mine  is  shut 
down,  production  ends  until  work  is  resumed.  The  in- 
tervening time,  so  far  as  regards  production,  might  as 
well  be  blotted  out.  The  lapse  of  days,  the  change  of 
seasons  is  no  element  in  the  production  that  depends 
solely  upon  the  amount  of  labor  expended.  But  in  the 
other  modes  of  production  to  which  I  have  referred,  and 
in  which  the  part  of  labor  may  be  likened  to  the  opera- 
tions of  lumbermen  who  throw  their  logs  into  the 
stream,  leaving  it  to  the  current  to  carry  them  to  the 


184  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  TO. 

boom  of  the  sawmill  many  miles  below,  time  is  an  ele- 
ment. The  seed  in  the  ground  germinates  and  grows 
while  the  farmer  sleeps  or  plows  new  fields,  and  the  ever- 
flowing  currents  of  air  and  ocean  bear  Whittington's  cat 
toward  the  rat-tormented  ruler  in  the  regions  of  romance. 
To  recur  now  to  Bastiat's  illustration.  It  is  evident 
that  if  there  is  any  reason  why  William  at  the  end  of  the 
year  should  return  to  James  more  than  an  equally  good 
plane,  it  does  not  spring,  as  Bastiat  has  it,  from  the  in- 
creased power  which  the  tool  gives  to  labor,  for  that,  as  I 
have  shown,  is  not  an  element;  but  it  springs  from  the 
element  of  time — the  difference  of  a  year  between  the 
lending  and  return  of  the  plane.  Now,  if  the  view  is 
confined  to  the  illustration,  there  is  nothing  to  suggest 
how  this  element  should  operate,  for  a  plane  at  the  end 
of  the  year  has  no  greater  value  than  a  plane  at  the  be- 
ginning. But  if  we  substitute  for  the  plane  a  calf,  it  is 
clearly  to  be  seen  that  to  put  James  in  as  good  a  position 
as  if  he  had  not  lent,  William  at  the  end  of  the  year 
must  return,  not  a  calf,  but  a  cow.  Or,  if  we  suppose 
that  the  ten  days'  labor  had  been  devoted  to  planting 
corn,  it  is  evident  that  James  would  not  have  been  fully 
recompensed  if  at  the  end  of  the  year  he  had  received 
simply  so  much  planted  corn,  for  during  the  year  the 
planted  corn  would  have  germinated  and  grown  and  mul- 
tiplied; and  so  if  the  plane  had  been  devoted  to  ex- 
change, it  might  during  the  year  have  been  turned  over 
several  times,  each  exchange  yielding  an  increase  to 
James.  Now,  therefore,  as  James'  labor  might  have 
been  applied  in  any  of  those  ways — or  what  amounts  to 
the  same  thing,  some  of  the  labor  devoted  to  making 
planes  might  have  been  thus  transferred — he  will  not 
make  a  plane  for  William  to  use  for  the  year  unless  he 
gets  back  more  than  a  plane.  And  William  can  afford  to 
give  back  more  than  a  plane,  because  the  same  general 
average  of  the  advantages  of  labor  applied  in  different 


Chap.  in.     INTEREST  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  INTEREST.  185 

modes  will  enable  him  to  obtain  from  his  labor  an  ad- 
vantage from  the  element  of  time.  It  is  this  general 
averaging,  or  as  we  may  say,  ''pooling'*  of  advantages, 
which  necessarily  takes  place  where  the  exigencies  of 
society  require  the  simultaneous  carrying  on  of  the  differ- 
ent modes  of  production,  which  gives  to  the  possession  of 
wealth  incapable  in  itself  of  increase  an  advantage  simi- 
lar to  that  which  attaches  to  wealth  used  in  such  a  waj/ 
as  to  gain  from  the  element  of  time.  And,  in  the  last 
analysis,  the  advantage  which  is  given  by  the  lapse  of 
time  springs  from  the  generative  force  of  nature  and  the 
varying  powers  of  nature  and  of  man. 

Were  the  quality  and  capacity  of  matter  everywhere 
uniform,  and  all  productive  power  in  man,  there  would 
be  no  interest.  The  advantage  of  superior  tools  might 
at  times  be  transferred  on  terms  resembling  the  payment 
of  interest,  but  such  transactions  would  be  irregular  and 
intermittent — the  exception,  not  the  rule.  For  the  power 
of  obtaining  such  returns  would  not,  as  now,  inhere  in 
the  possession  of  capital,  and  the  advantage  of  time 
would  operate  only  in  peculiar  circumstances.  That  I, 
having  a  thousand  dollars,  can  certainly  let  it  out  at  in- 
terest, does  not  arise  from  the  fact  that  there  are  others, 
not  having  a  thousand  dollars,  who  will  gladly  pay  me 
for  the  use  of  it,  if  they  can  get  it  no  other  way;  but 
from  the  fact  that  the  capital  which  my  thousand  dollars 
represents  has  the  power  of  yielding  an  increase  to 
whomsoever  has  it,  even  though  he  be  a  millionaire. 
Tor  the  price  which  anything  will  bring  does  not  depend 
upon  what  the  buyer  would  be  willing  to  give  rather  than 
go  without  it,  so  much  as  upon  what  the  seller  can  other- 
wise get.  For  instance,  a  manufacturer  who  wishes  to 
retire  from  business  has  machinery  to  the  value  of  lilOO,- 
000.  If  he  cannot,  should  he  sell,  take  this  $100,000 
and  invest  it  so  that  it  will  yield  him  interest,  it  will 
be  immaterial  to  him,  risk  being  eliminated,  whether  h«» 


188  THE  LAWS  OP  DISTRIBUTION".  Book  IlL 

obtains  the  whole  price  at  once  or  in  installments,  and  if 
the  purchaser  has  the  requisite  capital,  which  we  must 
suppose  in  order  that  the  transaction  may  rest  on  its  own 
merits,  it  will  be  immaterial  whether  he  pay  at  once  or 
after  a  time.  If  the  purchaser  has  not  the  required  capital, 
it  may  be  to  his  convenience  that  payments  should  be  de- 
layed, but  it  would  be  only  in  exceptional  circumstances 
that  the  seller  would  ask,  or  the  buyer  would  consent,  to 
pay  any  premium  on  this  account;  nor  in  such  cases 
would  this  premium  be  properly  interest.  For  interest 
is  not  properly  a  payment  made  for  the  use  of  capital, 
but  a  return  accruing  from  the  increase  of  capital.  If 
the  capital  did  not  yield  an  increase,  the  cases  would  be 
few  and  exceptional  in  which  the  owner  would  get  a 
premium.  William  would  soon  find  out  if  it  did  not  pay 
him  to  give  a  plank  for  the  privilege  of  deferring  pay- 
ment on  James'  plane. 

In  short,  when  we  come  to  analyze  production  we  find 
it  to  fall  into  three  modes — viz: 

Adapting,  or  changing  natural  products  either  in  form 
or  in  place  so  as  to  fit  them  for  the  satisfaction  of  human 
desire. 

Growing,  or  utilizing  the  vital  forces  of  nature,  as  by 
raising  vegetables  or  animals. 

Exchanging,  or  utilizing,  so  as  to  add  to  the  general 
sum  of  wealth,  the  higher  powers  of  those  natural  forces 
which  vary  with  locality,  or  of  those  human  forces  which 
vary  with  situation,  occupation,  or  character. 

In  each  of  these  three  modes  of  production  capital 
may  aid  labor — or,  to  speak  more  precisely,  in  the  first 
mode  capital  may  aid  labor,  but  is  not  absolutely  necessary; 
in  the  others  capital  must  aid  labor,  or  is  necessary. 

Now,  while  by  adapting  capital  in  proper  forms  we 
may  increase  the  effective  power  of  labor  to  impress 
upon  matter  the  character  of  wealth,  as  when  we  adapt 
wood  and  iron  to  the  form  and  use  of  a  plane;  or  iron. 


Chap.nh    INTEREST  AlfD  THE   CAUSE  OF   INTEREST.  187 

coal,  water,  and  oil  to  the  form  and  use  of  a  steam 
engine;  or  stone,  clay,  timber,  and  iron  to  that  of  a 
building,  yet  the  characteristic  of  this  use  of  capital  is, 
that  the  benefit  is  in  the  use.  When,  however,  we  em- 
ploy capital  in  the  second  of  these  modes,  as  when  we 
plant  grain  in  the  ground,  or  place  animals  on  a  stock 
farm,  or  put  away  wine  to  improve  with  age,  the  benefit 
arises,  not  from  the  use,  but  from  the  increase.  And  so, 
when  we  employ  capital  in  the  third  of  these  modes,  and 
instead  of  using  a  thing  we  exchange  it,  the  benefit  is  in 
the  increase  or  greater  value  of  the  things  received  in 
return. 

Primarily,  the  benefits  which  arise  from  use  go  to  labor, 
and  the  benefits  which  arise  from  increase,  to  capital. 
But,  inasmuch  as  the  division  of  labor  and  the  inter- 
changeability  of  wealth  necessitate  and  imply  an  averag- 
ing of  benefits,  in  so  far  as  these  different  modes  of  pro- 
duction correlate  with  each  other,  the  benefits  that  arise 
from  one  will  average  with  the  benefits  that  arise  from 
the  others,  for  neither  labor  nor  capital  will  be  devoted 
to  any  mode  of  production  while  any  other  mode  which 
is  open  to  them  will  yield  a  greater  return.  That  is  to 
say,  labor  expended  in  the  first  mode  of  production  will 
get,  not  the  whole  return,  but  the  return  minus  such  part 
as  is  necessary  to  give  to  capital  such  an  increase  as  it 
could  have  secured  in  the  other  modes  of  production,  and 
capital  engaged  in  the  second  and  third  modes  will  ob- 
tain, not  the  whole  increase,  but  the  increase  minus  what 
is  suflBcient  to  give  to  labor  such  reward  as  it  could  have 
secured  if  expended  in  the  first  mode. 

Thus  interest  springs  from  the  power  of  increase  which, 
the  reproductive  forces  of  nature,  and  the  in  effect  anal- 
ogous capacity  for  exchange,  give  to  capital.  It  is  not 
an  arbitrary,  but  a  natural  thing;  it  is  not  the  result  of  a 
particular  social  organization,  but  of  laws  of  the  universe 
which  underlie  society.     It  is,  therefore,  just. 


188  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION^.  Book  ITL 

They  who  talk  about  abolishing  interest  fall  into  an 
error  similar  to  that  previously  pointed  out  as  giving  its 
plausibility  to  the  doctrine  that  wages  are  drawn  from 
capital.  When  they  thus  think  of  interest,  they  think 
only  of  that  which  is  paid  by  the  user  of  capital  to  the 
owner  of  capital.  But,  manifestly,  this  is  not  all  inter- 
est, but  only  some  interest.  Whoever  uses  capital  and 
obtains  the  increase  it  is  capable  of  giving  receives  inter- 
est. If  I  plant  and  care  for  a  tree  until  it  comes  to 
maturity,  I  receive,  in  its  fruit,  interest  upon  the  capital 
I  have  thus  accumulated — that  is,  the  labor  I  have  ex- 
pended. If  I  raise  a  cow,  the  milk  which  she  yields  me, 
morning  and  evening,  is  not  merely  the  reward  of  the 
labor  then  exerted;  but  interest  upon  the  capital  which 
my  labor,  expended  in  raising  her,  has  accumulated  in 
the  cow.  And  so,  if  I  use  my  own  capital  in  directly  aid- 
ing production,  as  by  machinery,  or  in  indirectly  aiding 
production,  in  exchange,  I  receive  a  special  and  dis- 
tinguishable advantage  from  the  reproductive  character 
of  capital,  which  is  as  real,  though  perhaps  not  as  clear, 
as  though  I  had  lent  my  capital  to  another  and  he  had 
paid  me  interest. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OF   SPURIOUS   CAPITAL  AND  OF   PROFITS  OFTEN  MISTAKEN 
FOR   INTEREST. 

The  belief  that  interest  is  the  robbery  of  industry  is,  I 
am  persuaded,  in  large  part  due  to  a  failure  to  discrim- 
inate between  what  is  really  capital  and  what  is  not,  and 
between  profits  which  are  properly  interest  and  profits 
which  arise  from  other  sources  than  the  use  of  capital. 
In  the  speech  and  literature  of  the  day  every  one  is 
styled  a  capitalist  who  possesses  what,  independent  of 
his  labor,  will  yield  him  a  return,  while  whatever  is  thus 
received  is  spoken  of  as  the  earnings  or  takings  of  capi- 
tal, and  we  everywhere  hear  of  the  conflict  of  labor  and 
capital.  Whether  there  is,  in  reality,  any  conflict  be- 
tween labor  and  capital,  I  do  not  yet  ask  the  reader  to 
make  up  his  mind;  but  it  will  be  well  here  to  clear  away 
some  misapprehensions  which  confuse  the  judgment. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the  fact  that  land 
values,  which  constitute  such  an  enormous  part  of  what 
is  commonly  called  capital,  are  not  capital  at  all;  and 
that  rent,  which  is  as  commonly  included  in  the  receipts 
of  capital,  and  which  takes  an  ever-increasing  portion  of 
the  produce  of  an  advancing  community,  is  not  the  earn- 
ings of  capital,  and  must  be  carefully  separated  from  in- 
terest. It  is  not  necessary  now  to  dwell  further  upon 
this  point.  Attention  has  likewise  been  called  to  the 
fact  that  the  stocks,  bonds,  etc.,  which  constitute  an- 
other great  part  of  what  is  commonly  called  capital, 
are  not  capital  at  all;  but,  in  some  of  their  shapes,  these 
evidences  of  indebtedness  so  closely  resemble  capital. 


190  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTJKIBUTIOIS'.  Book  IIL 

and  in  some  cases  actually  perform,  or  seem  to  perform, 
the  functions  of  capital,  while  they  yield  a  return  to  their 
owners  which  is  not  only  spoken  of  as  interest,  but  has 
every  semblance  of  interest,  that  it  is  worth  while,  before 
attempting  to  clear  the  idea  of  interest  from  some  other 
ambiguities  that  beset  it,  to  speak  again  of  these  at 
greater  length. 

Nothing  can  be  capital,  let  it  always  be  remembered, 
that  is  not  wealth — that  is  to  say,  nothing  can  be  capital 
that  does  not  consist  of  actual,  tangible  things,  not  the 
spontaneous  offerings  of  nature,  which  have  in  them- 
selves, and  not  by  proxy,  the  power  of  directly  or  indi- 
rectly ministering  to  human  desire. 

Thus,  a  government  bond  is  not  capital,  nor  yet  is  ifc 
the  representative  of  capital.  The  capital  that  was  once 
received  for  it  by  the  government  has  been  consumed  un- 
productively — blown  away  from  the  mouths  of  cannon, 
used  up  in  war  ships,  expended  in  keeping  men  march- 
ing and  drilling,  killing  and  destroying.  The  bond  can- 
not represent  capital  that  has  been  destroyed.  It  does 
not  represent  capital  at  all.  It  is  simply  a  solemn  decla- 
ration that  the  government  will,  some  time  or  other, 
take  by  taxation  from  the  then  existing  stock  of  the  peo- 
ple, so  much  wealth,  which  it  will  turn  over  to  the  holder 
of  the  bond;  and  that,  in  the  meanwhile,  it  will,  from 
time  to  time,  take,  in  the  same  way,  enough  to  make  up 
to  the  holder  the  increase  which  so  much  capital  as  it 
some  day  promises  to  give  him  would  yield  him  were  it 
actually  in  his  possession.  The  immense  sums  which  are 
thus  taken  from  the  produce  of  every  modern  country  to 
pay  interest  on  public  debts  are  not  the  earnings  or  in- 
crease of  capital — are  not  really  interest  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  term,  but  are  taxes  levied  on  the  produce  of 
labor  and  capital,  leaving  so  much  less  for  wages  and  so 
much  less  for  real  interest. 

Butj  supposing  the  bonds  have  been  issued  for  the 


Chap.  IV.       OF   SPURIOUS   CAPITAL  AXD   INTEREST.  191 

deepening  of  a  riverbed,  the  construction  of  lighthouses, 
or  the  erection  of  a  public  market;  or  supposing,  to  em- 
body the  same  idea  while  changing  the  illustration,  they 
have  been  issued  by  a  railroad  company.  Here  they  do 
represent  capital,  existing  and  applied  to  productive 
uses,  and  like  stock  in  a  dividend  paying  company  may 
be  considered  as  evidences  of  the  ownership  of  capital. 
But  they  can  be  so  considered  only  in  so  far  as  they  act- 
ually represent  capital,  and  not  as  they  have  been  issued 
in  excess  of  the  capital  used.  Nearly  all  our  railroad 
companies  and  other  incorporations  are  loaded  down  in 
this  way.  Where  one  dollar's  worth  of  capital  has  been 
really  used,  certificates  for  two,  three,  four,  five,  or  even 
ten,  have  been  issued,  and  upon  this  fictitious  amount 
interest  or  dividends  are  paid  with  more  or  less  regu- 
larity. Now,  what,  in  excess  of  the  amount  due  as  in- 
terest to  the  real  capital  invested,  is  thus  earned  by  these 
companies  and  thus  paid  out,  as  well  as  the  large  sums 
absorbed  by  managing  rings  and  never  accounted  for,  is 
evidently  not  taken  from  the  aggregate  produce  of  the 
community  on  account  of  the  services  rendered  by  capi- 
tal— it  is  not  interest.  If  we  are  restricted  to  the  ter- 
minology of  economic  writers  who  decompose  profits  into 
interest,  insurance,  and  wages  of  superintendence,  it 
must  fall  into  the  category  of  wages  of  superintendence. 

But  while  wages  of  superintendence  clearly  enough 
include  the  income  derived  from  such  personal  qualities 
as  skill,  tact,  enterprise,  organizing  ability,  inventive 
power,  character,  etc.,  to  the  profits  we  are  speaking  of 
there  is  another  contributing  element,  which  can  only  ar- 
bitrarily be  classed  with  these — the  element  of  monopoly. 

When  James  I.  granted  to  his  minion  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  making  gold  and  silver  thread,  and  prohib- 
ited, under  severe  penalties,  every  one  else  from  making 
such  thread,  the  income  which  Buckingham  enjoyed  in 
aonsequence  did  not  arise  from  the  interest  upon  the 


192  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTEIBUTIOH.  Book  III 

capital  invested  in  the  manufacture,  nor  from  the  skill, 
etc.,  of  those  who  really  conducted  the  operations,  but 
from  what  he  got  from  the  king — viz.,  the  exclusive 
privilege — in  reality  the  power  to  levy  a  tax  for  his  own 
purposes  upon  all  the  users  of  such  thread.  From  a 
similar  source  comes  a  large  part  of  the  profits  which 
are  commonly  confounded  with  the  earnings  of  capital. 
Eeceipts  from  the  patents  granted  for  a  limited  term  of 
years  for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  invention  are  clearly 
attributable  to  this  source,  as  are  the  returns  derived  from 
monopolies  created  by  protective  tariffs  under  the  pre- 
tense of  encouraging  home  industry.  But  there  is  an- 
other far  more  insidious  and  far  more  general  form  of 
monopoly.  In  the  aggregation  of  large  masses  of  capital 
under  a  common  control  there  is  developed  a  new  p.nd 
essentially  different  power  from  that  power  of  increase 
which  is  a  general  characteristic  of  capital  and  which 
gives  rise  to  interest.  While  the  latter  is,  so  to  speak, 
constructive  in  its  nature,  the  power  which,  as  aggrega- 
tion proceeds,  rises  upon  it  is  destructive.  It  is  a  power 
of  the  same  kind  as  that  which  James  granted  to  Buck- 
ingham, and  it  is  often  exercised  with  as  reckless  a  dis- 
regard, not  only  of  the  industrial,  but  of  the  personal 
rights  of  individuals.  A  railroad  company  approaches  a 
small  town  as  a  highwayman  approaches  his  victim. 
The  threat,  *'If  you  do  not  accede  to  our  terms  we  will 
leave  your  town  two  or  three  miles  to  one  side!"  is  as 
eflBcacious  as  the  "Stand  and  deliver,"  when  backed  by 
a  cocked  pistol.  For  the  threat  of  the  railroad  company 
is  not  merely  to  deprive  the  town  of  the  benefits  which 
the  railroad  might  give;  it  is  to  put  it  in  a  far  worse  po- 
sition than  if  no  railroad  had  been  built.  Or  if,  where 
there  is  water  communication,  an  opposition  boat  is  put 
on;  rates  are  reduced  until  she  is  forced  off,  and  then 
the  public  are  compelled  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  operation, 
just  as  the  Kohillas  were  obliged  to  pay  the  forty  lacs 


Chap.  IV.       OF  SPURIOUS  CAPITAL  AND  INTEREST.  193 

with  which  Surajah  Dowlah  hired  of  Warren  Hastings  an 
English  force  to  assist  him  in  desolating  their  country 
and  decimating  their  people.  And  just  as  robbers  unite 
to  plunder  in  concert  and  divide  the  spoil,  so  do  the 
trunk  lines  of  railroad  unite  to  raise  rates  and  pool  their 
earnings,  or  the  Pacific  roads  form  a  combination  with 
the  Pacific  Mail  Steamship  Company  by  which  toll  gates 
are  virtually  established  on  land  and  ocean.  And  Just  as 
Buckingham's  creatures,  under  authority  of  the  gold 
thread  patent,  searched  private  houses,  and  seized  papers 
and  persons  for  purposes  of  lust  and  extortion,  so  does 
the  great  telegraph  company  which,  by  the  power  of  as- 
sociated capital  deprives  the  people  of  the  United  States 
of  the  full  benefits  of  a  beneficent  invention,  tamper 
with  correspondence  and  crush  out  newspapers  which 
offend  it. 

It  is  necessary  only  to  allude  to  these  things,  not  to 
dwell  on  them.  Every  one  knows  the  tyranny  and 
rapacity  with  which  capital  when  concentrated  in  large 
amounts  is  frequently  wielded  to  corrupt,  to  rob,  and  to 
destroy.  What  I  wish  to  call  the  reader's  attention  to  is 
that  profits  thus  derived  are  not  to  be  confounded  with 
the  legitimate  returns  of  capital  as  an  agent  of  produc- 
tion. They  are  for  the  most  part  to  be  attributed  to  a 
maladjustment  of  forces  in  the  legislative  department  of 
government,  and  to  a  blind  adherence  to  ancient  barbar- 
isms and  the  superstitious  reverence  for  the  technicalities 
of  a  narrow  profession  in  the  administration  of  law;  while 
the  general  cause  which  in  advancing  communities  tends, 
with  the  concentration  of  wealth,  to  the  concentration 
of  power,  is  the  solution  of  the  great  problem  we  are  seek- 
ing for,  but  have  not  yet  found. 

Any  analysis  will  show  that  much  of  the  profits  which 
are,  in  common  thought,  confounded  with  interest  are  in 
reality  due,  not  to  the  power  of  capital,  but  to  the 
power  of  concentrated  capital,  or  of  concentrated  capital 


194  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  IIL 

acting  upon  bad  social  adjustments.  And  it  will  also 
show  that  what  are  clearly  and  properly  wages  of  super- 
intendence are  very  frequently  confounded  with  the 
earnings  of  capital. 

And,  so,  profits  properly  due  to  the  elements  of  risk 
are  frequently  confounded  with  interest.  Some  people 
acquire  wealth  by  taking  chances  which  to  the  majority 
of  people  must  necessarily  bring  loss.  Such  are  many 
forms  of  speculation,  and  especially  that  mode  of 
gambling  known  as  stock  dealing.  Nerve,  judgment, 
the  possession  of  capital,  skill  in  what  in  lower  forms  of 
gambling  are  known  as  the  arts  of  the  confidence  man 
and  blackleg,  give  advantage  to  the  individual;  but, 
just  as  at  a  gaming  table,  whatever  one  gains  some  one 
else  must  lose. 

Now,  taking  the  great  fortunes  that  are  so  often  re- 
ferred to  as  exemplifying  the  accumulative  power  of  capi- 
tal— the  Dukes  of  Westminster  and  Marquises  of  Bute, 
the  Rothschilds,  Astors,  Stewarts,  Vanderbilts,  Goulds, 
Stanfords,  and  Floods — it  is  upon  examination  readily 
seen  that  they  have  been  built  up,  in  greater  or  less  part, 
not  by  interest,  but  by  elements  such  as  we  have  been 
reviewing. 

How  necessary  it  is  to  note  the  distinctions  to  which  I 
have  been  calling  attention  is  shown  in  current  discus- 
sions, where  the  shield  seems  alternately  white  or  black 
as  the  standpoint  is  shifted  from  one  side  to  the  other. 
On  the  one  hand  we  are  called  upon  to  see,  in  the  exist- 
ence of  deep  poverty  side  by  side  with  vast  accumula- 
tions of  wealth,  the  aggressions  of  capital  on  labor,  and 
in  reply  it  is  pointed  out  that  capital  aids  labor,  and 
hence  we  are  asked  to  conclude  that  there  is  nothing 
unjust  or  unnatural  in  the  wide  gulf  between  rich  and 
poor;  that  wealth  is  but  the  reward  of  industry,  intelli- 
gence, and  thrift;  and  poverty  but  the  punishment  of 
indolence,  ignorance,  and  imprudence. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  LAW  OF  INTBBEST, 

Let  us  tarn  now  to  the  law  of  interest,  keeping  in 
mind  two  things  to  which  attention  has  heretofore  been 
called — viz: 

First — That  it  is  not  capital  which  employs  labor,  but 
labor  which  employs  capital. 

Second — That  capital  is  not  a  fixed  quantity,  but  can 
always  be  increased  or  decreased,  (1)  by  the  greater  or 
less  application  of  labor  to  the  production  of  capital,  and 
(2)  by  the  conversion  of  wealth  into  capital,  or  capital 
into  wealth,  for  capital  being  but  wealth  applied  in  a  cer- 
tain way,  wealth  is  the  larger  and  inclusive  term. 

It  is  manifest  that  under  conditions  of  freedom  the 
maximum  that  can  be  given  for  the  use  of  capital  will  be 
the  increase  it  will  bring,  and  the  minimum  or  zero  will 
be  the  replacement  of  capital;  for  above  the  one  point 
the  borrowing  of  capital  would  involve  a  loss,  and  below 
the  other,  capital  could  not  be  maintained. 

Observe,  again:  It  is  not,  as  is  carelessly  stated  by 
some  writers,  the  increased  efficiency  given  to  labor  by 
the  adaptation  of  capital  to  any  special  form  or  use  which 
fixes  this  maximum,  but  the  average  power  of  increase 
which  belongs  to  capital  generally.  The  power  of  apply- 
ing itself  in  advantageous  forms  is  a  power  of  labor, 
which  capital  as  capital  cannot  claim  nor  share.  A  bow 
and  arrows  will  enable  an  Indian  to  kill,  let  us  say,  a 
buffalo  every  day,  while  with  sticks  and  stones  he  could 
hardly  kill  one  in  a  week;  but  the  weapon  maker  of  the 
tribe  could  not  claim  from  the  hunter  six  out  of  every 


196  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  m 

seven  buffaloes  killed  as  a  return  for  the  use  of  a  bow 
and  arrows;  nor  will  capital  invested  in  a  woolen  factory 
yield  to  the  capitalist  the  difference  between  the  produce 
of  the  factory  and  what  the  same  amount  of  labor  could 
have  obtained  with  the  spinning-wheel  and  handloom. 
William  when  he  borrows  a  plane  from  James  does  not 
in  that  obtain  the  advantage  of  the  increased  eflBciency  of 
labor  when  using  a  plane  for  the  smoothing  of  boards  over 
what  it  has  when  smoothing  them  with  a  shell  or  flint. 
The  progress  of  knowledge  has  made  the  advantage  in- 
volved in  the  use  of  planes  a  common  property  and  power 
of  labor.  What  he  gets  from  James  is  merely  such  ad- 
vantage as  the  element  of  a  year's  time  will  give  to  the 
possession  of  so  much  capital  as  is  represented  by  the 
plane. 

Now,  if  the  vital  forces  of  nature  which  give  an  ad- 
vantage to  the  element  of  time  be  the  cause  of  interest, 
it  would  seem  to  follow  that  this  maximum  rate  of  inter- 
est would  be  determined  by  the  strength  of  these  forces 
and  the  extent  to  which  they  are  engaged  in  production. 
But  while  the  reproductive  force  of  nature  seems  to  vary 
enormously,  as,  for  instance,  between  the  salmon,  which 
spawns  thousands  of  eggs,  and  the  whale,  which  brings 
forth  a  single  calf  at  intervals  of  years;  between  the  rab- 
bit and  the  elephant,  the  thistle  and  the  gigantic  red- 
wood, it  appears  from  the  way  the  natural  balance  is 
maintained  that  there  is  an  equation  between  the  repro- 
ductive and  destructive  forces  of  nature,  which  in  effect 
brings  the  principle  of  increase  to  a  uniform  point.  This 
natural  balance  man  has  within  narrow  limits  the  power 
to  disturb,  and  by  the  modification  of  natural  conditions 
may  avail  himself  at  will  of  the  varying  strength  of  the 
reproductive  force  in  nature.  But  when  he  does  so, 
there  arises  from  the  wide  scope  of  his  desires  another 
principle  which  brings  about  in  the  increase  of  wealth  a 
similar  equation  and  balance  to  that  which  is  effected  in 


Chap.  V.  THE   LAW  OF  INTEREST.  197 

nature  between  the  different  forms  of  life.  This  equa- 
tion exhibits  itself  through  values.  If,  in  a  country- 
adapted  to  both,  I  go  to  raising  rabbits  and  you  to  rais- 
ing horses,  my  rabbits  may,  until  the  natural  limit  is 
reached,  increase  faster  than  your  horses.  But  my  capi- 
tal will  not  increase  faster,  for  the  effect  of  the  varying 
rates  of  increase  will  be  to  lower  the  value  of  rabbits  as 
compared  with  horses,  and  to  increase  the  value  of  horses 
as  compared  with  rabbits. 

Though  the  varying  strength  of  the  vital  forces  of 
nature  is  thus  brought  to  uniformity,  there  may  be  a  dif- 
ference in  the  different  stages  of  social  development  as  to 
the  proportionate  extent  to  which,  in  the  aggregate  pro- 
duction of  wealth,  these  vital  forces  are  enlisted.  But 
as  to  this,  there  are  two  remarks  to  be  made.  In  the 
first  place,  although  in  such  a  country  as  England  the 
part  taken  by  manufactures  in  the  aggregate  wealth  pro- 
duction has  very  much  increased  as  compared  with  the 
part  taken  by  agriculture,  yet  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  to 
a  very  great  extent  this  is  true  only  of  the  political  or 
geographical  division,  and  not  of  the  industrial  commu- 
nity. For  industrial  communities  are  not  limited  by 
political  divisions,  or  bounded  by  seas  or  mountains. 
They  are  limited  only  by  the  scope  of  their  exchanges, 
and  the  proportion  which  in  the  industrial  economy  of 
England  agriculture  and  stock-raising  bear  to  maufac- 
tures  is  averaged  with  Iowa  and  Illinois,  with  Texas  and 
California,  with  Canada  and  India,  with  Queensland  and 
the  Baltic — in  short,  with  every  country  to  which  the 
world-wide  exchanges  of  England  extend.  In  the  next 
place,  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  although  in  the  progress 
of  civilization  the  tendency  is  to  the  relative  increase  of 
manufactures,  as  compared  with  agriculture,  and  con- 
sequently to  a  proportionately  less  reliance  upon  the 
reproductive  forces  of  nature,  yet  this  is  accompanied 
by  a  corresponding  extension  of  exchanges,  and  hence  a 


198  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTKIBUTION.  Book  III. 

greater  calling  in  of  the  power  of  increase  which  thus 
arises.  So  these  tendencies,  to  a  great  extent,  and,  prob- 
ably, so  far  as  we  have  yet  gone,  completely,  balance  each 
other,  and  preserve  the  equilibrium  which  fixes  the  aver- 
age increase  of  capital,  or  the  normal  rate  of  interest. 

Now,  this  normal  point  of  interest,  which  lies  between 
the  necessary  maximum  and  the  necessary  minimum  of 
the  return  to  capital,  must,  wherever  it  rests,  be  such 
that  all  things  (such  as  the  feeling  of  security,  desire  for 
accumulation,  etc.)  considered,  the  reward  of  capital  and 
the  reward  of  labor  will  be  equal — that  is  to  say,  will  give 
an  equally  attractive  result  for  the  exertion  or  sacrifice 
involved.  It  is  impossible,  perhaps,  to  formulate  this 
point,  as  wages  are  habitually  estimated  in  quantity  and 
interest  in  a  ratio;  but  if  we  suppose  a  given  quantity  of 
wealth  to  be  the  produce  of  a  given  amount  of  labor,  co- 
operating for  a  stated  time  with  a  certain  amount  of 
capital,  the  proportion  in  which  the  produce  would  be 
divided  between  the  labor  and  the  capital  would  afford 
a  comparison.  There  must  be  such  a  point  at,  or  rather, 
about,  which  the  rate  of  interest  must  tend  to  settle; 
since,  unless  such  an  equilibrium  were  effected,  labor 
would  not  accept  the  use  of  capital,  or  capital  would  not 
be  placed  at  the  disposal  of  labor.  For  labor  and  capital 
are  but  different  forms  of  the  same  thing — human  exer- 
tion. Capital  is  produced  by  labor;  it  is,  in  fact,  but 
labor  impressed  upon  matter — labor  stored  up  in  matter, 
to  be  released  again  as  needed,  as  the  heat  of  the  sun 
stored  up  in  coal  is  released  in  the  furnace.  The  use  of 
capital  in  production  is,  therefore,  but  a  mode  of  labor. 
As  capital  can  be  used  only  by  being  consumed,  its  use 
is  the  expenditure  of  labor,  and  for  the  maintenance  of 
capital,  its  production  by  labor  must  be  commensurate 
with  its  consumption  in  aid  of  labor.  Hence  the  prin- 
ciple that,  under  circumstances  which  permit  free  com- 
petition, operates  to  bring  wages  to  a  common  standard 


CtMp.  V.  THE  LAW  OV  INTEREST.  199 

and  profits  to  a  substantial  equality — the  principle  that 
men  will  seek  to  gratify  their  desires  with  the  least  exer- 
tion— operates  to  establish  and  maintain  this  equilibrium 
between  wages  and  interest. 

This  natural  relation  between  interest  and  wages — tnis 
equilibrium  at  which  both  will  represent  equal  returns  to 
equal  exertions — may  be  stated  in  a  form  which  suggests 
a  relation  of  opposition;  but  this  opposition  is  only  ap- 
parent. In  a  partnership  between  Dick  and  Harry,  the 
statement  that  Dick  receives  a  certain  proportion  of 
the  profits  implies  that  the  portion  of  Harry  is  less  or 
greater  as  Dick's  is  greater  or  leas;  but  where,  as  in  this 
case,  each  gets  only  what  he  adds  to  the  common  fund, 
the  increase  of  the  portion  of  the  one  does  not  decrease 
what  the  other  receives. 

And  this  relation  fixed,  it  is  evident  that  interest  and 
wages  must  rise  and  fall  together,  and  that  interest  can- 
not be  increased  without  increasing  wages;  nor  wages 
lowered  without  depressing  interest.  For  if  wages  fall, 
interest  must  also  fall  in  proportion,  else  it  becomes 
more  profitable  to  turn  labor  into  capital  than  to  apply 
it  directly;  while,  if  interest  falls,  wages  must  likewise 
proportionately  fall,  or  else  the  increment  of  capital 
would  be  checked. 

We  are,  of  course,  not  speaking  of  particular  wages 
and  particular  interest,  but  of  the  general  rate  of  wages 
and  the  general  rate  of  interest,  meaning  always  by  inter- 
est the  return  which  capital  can  secure,  less  insurance 
and  wages  of  superintendence.  In  a  particular  case,  or 
a  particular  employment,  the  tendency  of  wages  and  in- 
terest to  an  equilibrium  may  be  impeded;  but  between  the 
general  rate  of  wages  and  the  general  rate  of  interest, 
this  tendency  must  be  prompt  to  act.  For  though  in  a 
particular  branch  of  producton  the  line  may  be  clearly 
drawn  between  those  who  furnish  labor  and  those  who 
furnish  capital,  yet  even  in  communities  where  there  is 


200  THE  LAWS  OF   DISTRIBUTION.  Booh  Ul 

the  sharpest  distinction  between  the  general  class  labor- 
ers and  the  general  class  capitalists,  these  two  classes 
shade  off  into  each  other  by  imperceptible  gradations, 
and  on  the  extremes  where  the  two  classes  meet  in  the 
same  persons,  the  interaction  which  restores  equilibrium, 
or  rather  prevents  its  disturbance,  can  go  on  without  ob- 
struction, whatever  obstacles  may  exist  where  the  separa- 
tion is  complete.  And,  furthermore,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, as  has  before  been  stated,  that  capital  is  but  a 
portion  of  wealth,  distinguished  from  wealth  generally 
only  by  the  purpose  to  which  it  is  applied,  and,  hence, 
the  whole  body  of  wealth  has  upon  the  relations  of  capi- 
tal and  labor  the  same  equalizing  effect  that  a  fly-wheel 
has  upon  the  motion  of  machiLc  y,  taking  up  capital 
when  it  is  in  excess  and  giving  it  out  again  when  there 
is  a  deficiency,  just  as  a  jeweler  may  give  his  wife  dia- 
monds to  wear  when  he  has  a  superabundant  stock,  and 
put  them  in  his  showcase  again  when  his  stock  becomes 
reduced.  Thus  any  tendency  on  the  part  of  interest  to 
rise  above  the  equilibrium  with  wages  must  immediately 
beget  not  only  a  tendency  to  direct  labor  to  the  produc- 
tion of  capital,  but  also  the  application  of  wealth  to  the 
uses  of  capital;  while  any  tendency  of  wages  to  rise  above 
the  equilibrium  with  interest  must  in  like  manner  beget 
not  only  a  tendency  to  turn  labor  from  the  production  of 
capital,  but  also  to  lessen  the  proportion  of  capital  by 
diverting  from  a  productive  to  a  non-productive  use 
some  of  the  articles  of  wealth  of  which  capital  is  com- 
posed. 

To  recapitulate:  There  is  a  certain  relation  or  ratio  be- 
tween wages  and  interest,  fixed  by  causes,  which,  if  not 
absolutely  permanent,  slowly  change,  at  which  enough 
labor  will  be  turned  into  capital  to  supply  the  capital 
which,  in  the  degree  of  knowledge,  state  of  the  arts, 
density  of  population,  character  of  occupations,  variety, 
extent  and  rapidity  of  exchanges,  will  be  demanded  for 


(map.  V.  THE   LAW   OF  IKTEREST.  301 

production,  and  this  relation  or  ratio  the  interaction  of 
labor  and  capital  constantly  maintains;  hence  interest 
must  rise  and  fall  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  wages. 

To  illustrate:  The  price  of  flour  is  determined  by  the 
price  of  wheat  and  cost  of  milling.  The  cost  of  milling 
varies  slowly  and  but  little,  the  difference  being,  even  at 
long  intervals,  hardly  perceptible;  while  the  price  of 
wheat  varies  frequently  and  largely.  Hence  we  correctly 
say  that  the  price  of  flour  is  governed  by  the  price  of 
wheat.  Or,  to  put  the  proposition  in  the  same  form  as 
the  preceding:  There  is  a  certain  relation  or  ratio  be- 
tween the  value  of  wheat  and  the  value  of  flour,  fixed  by 
the  cost  of  milling,  which  relation  or  ratio  the  interac- 
tion between  the  demand  for  flour  and  the  supply  of 
wheat  constantly  maintains;  hence  the  price  of  flour 
must  rise  and  fall  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  price  of 
wheat. 

Or,  as,  leaving  the  connecting  link,  the  price  of  wheat, 
to  inference,  we  say  that  the  price  of  flour  depends  upon 
the  character  of  the  seasons,  wars,  etc.,  so  may  we  put  the 
law  of  interest  in  a  form  which  directly  connects  it  with 
the  law  of  rent,  by  saying  that  the  general  rate  of  interest 
will  be  determined  by  the  return  to  capital  upon  the  poor- 
est land  to  which  capital  is  freely  applied — that  is  to  say, 
upon  the  best  land  open  to  it  without  the  payment  of 
rent.  Thus  we  bring  the  law  of  interest  into  a  form 
which  shows  it  to  be  a  corollary  of  the  law  of  rent. 

We  may  prove  this  conclusion  in  another  way:  For 
that  interest  must  decrease  as  rent  increases,  we  can 
plainly  see  if  we  eliminate  wages.  To  do  this,  we  must, 
to  be  sure,  imagine  a  universe  organized  on  totally  differ- 
ent principles.  Nevertheless,  we  may  imagine  what 
Carlyle  would  call  a  fool's  paradise,  where  the  production 
of  wealth  went  on  without  the  aid  of  labor,  and  solely  by 
the  reproductive  force  of  capital — where  sheep  bore 
ready-made  clothing  on  their  backs,  cows  presented  but- 


J0>*  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  lU. 

ter  and  cheeae,  and  oxen,  when  they  got  to  the  proper 
point  of  fatness,  carved  themselves  into  beefsteaks  and 
roasting  ribs;  where  houses  grew  from  the  seed,  and  a 
jackknife  thrown  upon  the  ground  would  take  root  and 
in  due  time  bear  a  crop  of  assorted  cutlery.  Imagine 
certain  capitalists  transported,  with  their  capital  in  ap- 
propriate forms,  to  such  a  place.  Manifestly,  they  would 
get,  as  the  return  for  their  capital,  the  whole  amount  of 
wealth  it  produced  only  so  long  as  none  of  its  produce 
was  demanded  as  rent.  When  rent  arose,  it  would 
come  out  of  the  produce  of  capital,  and  as  it  increased, 
the  return  to  the  owners  of  capital  must  necessarily 
diminish.  If  we  imagine  the  place  where  capital  pos- 
sessed this  power  of  producing  wealth  without  the  aid  of 
labor  to  be  of  limited  extent,  say  an  island,  we  shall  see 
that  as  soon  as  capital  had  increased  to  the  limit  of  the 
island  to  support  it,  the  return  to  capital  must  fall  to  a 
trifle  above  its  minimum  of  mere  replacement,  and  the 
land  owners  would  receive  nearly  the  whole  produce  as 
rent,  for  the  only  alternative  capitalists  would  have 
would  be  to  throw  their  capital  into  the  sea.  Or,  if  we 
imagine  such  an  island  to  be  in  communication  with  the 
rest  of  the  world,  the  return  to  capital  would  settle  at  the 
rate  of  return  in  other  places.  Interest  there  would  be 
neither  higher  nor  lower  than  anywhere  else.  Rent  would 
obtain  the  whole  of  the  superior  advantage,  and  the 
land  of  such  an  island  would  have  a  great  value. 
To  sum  up,  the  law  of  interest  is  this: 

The  relation  between  wages  and  interest  is  determined 
by  the  average  power  of  increase  which  attaches  to  capital 
from  its  use  in  reproductive  modes.  As  rent  arises,  in- 
terest will  fall  as  wages  fall,  or  will  be  determined  by  the 
margin  of  cultivation. 

I  have  endeavored  at  this  length  to  trace  out  and  illus- 
trate the  law  of  interest  more  in  deference  to  the  existing 


autp:v:  THE  LAW  OP  IISTEREST.  203 

terminology  and  modes  of  thought  than  from  the  real 
necessities  of  our  inquiry,  were  it  unembarrassed  by  be- 
fogging discussions.  In  trath,  the  primary  division  of 
wealth  in  distribution  is  dual,  not  tripartite.  Capital  is 
but  a  form  of  labor,  and  its  distinction  from  labor  is  in 
reality  but  a  subdivision,  just  as  the  division  of  labor  into 
skilled  and  unskilled  would  be.  In  our  examination  we 
have  reached  the  same  point  as  would  have  been  attained 
had  we  simply  treated  capital  as  a  form  of  labor,  and 
sought  the  law  which  divides  the  produce  between  rent 
and  wages;  that  is  to  say,  between  the  possessors  of  the 
two  factors,  natural  substances  and  powers,  and  human 
exertion — which  two  factors  by  their  union  produce  all 
wealth. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WAGES  AND  THE  LAW  OF  WAGES. 

We  have  by  inference  already  obtained  the  law  of 
wages.  But  to  verify  the  deduction  and  to  strip  the 
subject  of  all  ambiguities,  let  us  seek  the  law  from  an 
independent  starting  point. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  such  thing  as  a  common  rate  of 
wages,  in  the  sense  that  there  is  at  any  given  time  and 
place  a  common  rate  of  interest.  Wages,  which  include 
all  returns  received  from  labor,  not  only  vary  with  the 
differing  powers  of  individuals,  but,  as  the  organization 
of  society  becomes  elaborate,  vary  largely  as  between 
occupations.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  certain  general 
relation  between  all  wages,  so  that  we  express  a  clear  and 
well-understood  idea  when  we  say  that  wages  are  higher 
or  lower  in  one  time  or  place  than  in  another.  In  their 
degrees,  wages  rise  and  fall  in  obedience  to  a  common 
law.     What  is  this  law? 

The  fundamental  principle  of  human  action — the  law 
that  is  to  political  economy  what  the  law  of  gravitation 
is  to  physics — is  that  men  seek  to  gratify  their  desires 
with  the  least  exertion.  Evidently,  this  principle  must 
bring  to  an  equality,  through  the  competition  it  induces, 
the  reward  gained  by  equal  exertions  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances. When  men  work  for  themselves,  this 
equalization  will  be  largely  affected  by  the  equation  of 
prices;  and  between  those  who  work  for  themselves  and 
those  who  work  for  others,  the  same  tendency  to  equali- 
zation will  operate,  Now,  under  this  principle,  what,  in 
conditions  of  freedom,  will  be  the  terms  at  which  one 
man  can  hire  others  to  work  for  him?    Evidently,  they 


Oiap.  n.  WAGES  AND  THE  LAW  OP  WAGES.  305 

will  be  fixed  by  what  the  men  could  make  if  laboring  for 
themselves.  The  principle  which  will  prevent  him  from 
having  to  give  anything  above  this,  except  what  is  neces- 
sary to  induce  the  change,  will  also  prevent  them  from 
taking  less.  Did  they  demand  more,  the  competition  of 
others  would  prevent  them  'from  getting  employment. 
Did  he  offer  less,  none  would  accept  the  terms,  as  they 
could  obtain  greater  results  by  working  for  themselves. 
Thus,  although  the  employer  wishes  to  pay  as  little  as 
possible,  and  the  employee  to  receive  as  much  as  possi- 
ble, wages  will  be  fixed  by  the  value  or  produce  of  such 
labor  to  the  laborers  themselves.  If  wages  are  tempo- 
rarily carried  either  above  or  below  this  line,  a  tendency 
to  carry  them  back  at  once  arises. 

But  the  result,  or  the  earnings  of  labor,  as  is  readily 
seen  in  those  primary  and  fundamental  occupations  in 
which  labor  first  engages,  and  which,  even  in  the  most 
highly  developed  condition  of  society,  still  form  the  base 
of  production,  does  not  depend  merely  upon  the  inten-. 
sity  or  quality  of  the  labor  itself.  Wealth  is  the  product 
of  two  factors,  land  and  labor,  and  what  a  given  amount 
of  labor  will  yield  will  vary  with  the  powers  of  the 
natural  opportunities  to  which  it  is  applied.  This  being 
the  case,  the  principle  that  men  seek  to  gratify  their  de- 
sires with  the  least  exertion  will  fix  wages  at  the  produce 
of  such  labor  at  the  point  of  highest  natural  productive- 
ness open  to  it.  Now,  by  virtue  of  the  same  principle, 
the  highest  point  of  natural  productiveness  open  to 
labor  under  existing  conditions  will  be  the  lowest  point 
at  which  production  continues,  for  men,  impelled  by  a 
supreme  law  of  the  human  mind  to  seek  the  satisfaction 
of  their  desires  with  the  least  exertion,  will  not  expend 
labor  at  a  lower  point  of  productiveness  while  a  higher  is 
open  to  them.  Thus  the  wages  which  an  employer  must 
pay  will  be  measured  by  the  lowest  point  of  natural  pro- 
ductiveness to  which  production  extends,  and  wages  will 
rise  or  fall  as  this  point  rises  or  falls. 


!W^  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  IIL 

To  illustrate:  In  a  simple  state  of  society,  each  man, 
as  is  the  primitive  mode,  works  for  himself — some  in 
hunting,  let  us  say,  some  in  fishing,  some  in  cultivating 
the  ground.  Cultivation,  we  will  suppose,  has  just  be- 
gun, and  the  land  in  use  is  all  of  the  same  quality,  yield- 
ing a  similar  return  to  similar  exertions.  Wages,  there- 
fore— for,  though  there  is  neither  employer  nor  em- 
ployed, there  are  yet  wages — will  be  the  full  produce  of 
labor,  and,  making  allowance  for  the  difference  of  agree- 
ableness,  risk,  etc.,  in  the  three  pursuits,  they  will  be  on 
the  average  equal  in  each — that  is  to  say,  equal  exertions 
will  yield  equal  results.  Now,  if  one  of  their  number 
wishes  to  employ  some  of  his  fellows  to  work  for  him  in- 
stead of  for  themselves,  he  must  pay  wages  fixed  by  this 
full,  average  produce  of  labor. 

Let  a  period  of  time  elapse.  Cultivation  has  ex- 
tended, and,  instead  of  land  of  the  same  quality,  em- 
braces lands  of  different  qualities.  Wages,  now,  will  not 
be  as  before,  the  average  produce  of  labor.  They  will  be 
the  average  produce  of  labor  at  the  margin  of  cultiva- 
tion, or  the  point  of  lowest  return.  For,  as  men  seek  to 
satisfy  their  desires  with  the  least  possible  exertion,  the 
point  of  lowest  return  in  cultivation  must  yield  to  labor 
a  return  equivalent  to  the  average  return  in  hunting  and 
fishing.*  Labor  will  no  longer  yield  equal  returns  to 
equal  exertions,  but  those  who  expend  their  labor  on  the 
superior  land  will  obtain  a  greater  produce  for  the  same 
exertion  than  those  who  cultivate  the  inferior  land. 
Wages,  however,  will  still  be  equal,  for  this  excess  which 
the  cultivators  of  the  superior  land  receive  is  in  reality 
rent,  and  if  land  has  been  subjected  to  individual  owner- 
ship will  give  it  a  value.  Now,  if,  under  these  changed 
circumstances,  one  member  of  this  community  wishes  to 
hire  others  to  work  for  him,  he  will  have  to  pay  only 

*  This  equalization  will  be  effected  by  the  equation  of  prices. 


map.  VI.  WAGES  AND  THE  LAW  OF  WAGES.  207 

what  the  labor  yields  at  the  lowest  point  of  cultivation. 
If  thereafter  the  margin  of  cultivation  sinks  to  points  of 
lower  and  lower  productiveness,  so  must  wages  sink;  if, 
on  the  contrary,  it  rises,  so  also  must  wages  rise;  for, 
just  as  a  free  body  tends  to  take  the  shortest  route  to 
the  earth's  center,  so  do  men  seek  the  easiest  mode  to 
the  gratification  of  their  desires. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  law  of  wages,  as  a  deduction 
from  a  principle  most  obvious  and  most  universal.  That 
wages  depend  upon  the  margin  of  cultivation — that  they 
will  be  greater  or  less  as  the  produce  which  labor  can  ob- 
tain from  the  highest  natural  opportunities  open  to  it  is 
greater  or  less,  flows  from  the  principle  that  men  will 
seek  to  satisfy  their  wants  with  the  least  exertion. 

Now,  if  we  turn  from  simple  social  states  to  the  complex 
phenomena  of  highly  civilized  societies,  we  shall  find 
upon  examination  that  they  also  fall  under  this  law. 

In  such  societies,  wages  differ  widely,  but  they  still 
bear  a  more  or  less  definite  and  obvious  relation  to  each 
other.  This  relation  is  not  invariable,  as  at  one  time  a 
philosopher  of  repute  may  earn  by  his  lectures  many  fold 
the  wages  of  the  best  mechanic,  and  at  another  can 
hardly  hope  for  the  pay  of  a  footman;  as  in  a  great  city 
occupations  may  yield  relatively  high  wages,  which  in  a 
new  settlement  would  yield  relatively  low  wages;  yet 
these  variations  between  wages  may,  under  all  conditions, 
and  in  spite  of  arbitrary  divergences  caused  by  custom, 
law,  etc.,  be  traced  to  certain  circumstances.  In  one  of 
his  most  interesting  chapters  Adam  Smith  thus  enumer- 
ates the  principal  circumstances  * 'which  make  up  for  a 
small  pecuniary  gain  in  some  employments  and  counter- 
balance a  great  one  in  others:  First,  the  agreeableness  or 
disagreeableness  of  the  employments  themselves.  Sec- 
ondly, the  easiness  and  cheapness,  or  the  diflBculty  and 
expense  of  learning  them.  Thirdly,  the  constancy  or  in- 
constancy of  employment  in  them.    Fourthly,  the  small 


208  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  HL 

or  great  trust  which  must  be  reposed  in  them.  Fifthly, 
the  probability  or  improbability  of  success  in  them. "  *  It 
is  not  necessary  to  dwell  in  detail  on  these  causes  of  vari- 
ation in  wages  between  different  employments.  They 
have  been  admirably  explained  and  illustrated  by  Adam 
Smith  and  the  economists  who  have  followed  him,  who 
have  well  worked  out  the  details,  even  if  they  have  failed 
to  apprehend  the  main  law. 

The  effect  of  all  the  circumstances  which  give  rise  to 
the  differences  between  wages  in  different  occupations 
may  be  included  as  supply  and  demand,  and  it  is  per- 
fectly correct  to  say  that  the  wages  in  different  occupa- 
tions will  vary  relatively  according  to  differences  in  the 
supply  and  demand  of  labor — meaning  by  demand  the 
call  which  the  community  as  a  whole  makes  for  services 
of  the  particular  kind,  and  by  supply  the  relative  amount 
of  labor  which,  under  the  existing  conditions,  can  be  de- 
termined to  the  performance  of  those  particular  services. 
But  though  this  is  true  as  to  the  relative  differences  of 
wages,  when  it  is  said,  as  is  commonly  said,  that  the  gen- 
eral rate  of  wages  is  determined  by  supply  and  demand, 
the  words  are  meaningless.  For  supply  and  demand  are 
but  relative  terms.  The  supply  of  labor  can  only  mean 
labor  offered  in  exchange  for  labor  or  the  produce  of 
labor,  and  the  demand  for  labor  can  only  mean  labor  or 
the  produce  of  labor  offered  in  exchange  for  labor.  Sup- 
ply is  thus  demand,  and  demand  supply,  and,  in  the  whole 
community,  one  must  be  co-extensive  with  the  other. 
This  is  clearly  apprehended  by  the  current  political  econ- 
omy in  relation  to  sales,  and  the  reasoning  of  Eicardo, 
Mill,  and  others,  which  proves  that  alterations  in  supply 
and  demand  cannot  produce  a  general  rise  or  fall  of 

♦This  last,  which  is  analogous  to  the  element  of  risk  in  profits, 
accounts  for  the  high  wages  of  successful  lawyers,  physicians,  con 
'tractors,  actors,  etc. 


Chap.  VJ.  WAGES  AND  THE  LAW  OF  WAGES.  209 

values,  though  they  may  cause  a  rise  or  fall  in  the  value 
of  a  particular  thing,  is  as  applicable  to  labor.  What 
conceals  the  absurdity  of  speaking  generally  of  supply 
and  demand  in  reference  to  labor  is  the  habit  of  consid- 
ering the  demand  for  labor  as  springing  from  capital  and 
as  something  distinct  from  labor;  but  the  analysis  to 
which  this  idea  has  been  heretofore  subjected  has  suffi- 
ciently shown  its  fallacy.  It  is  indeed  evident  from  the 
mere  statement,  that  wages  can  never  permanently  ex- 
ceed the  produce  of  labor,  and  hence  that  there  is  no 
fund  from  which  wages  can  for  any  time  be  drawn,  save 
that  which  labor  constantly  creates. 

But,  though  all  the  circumstances  which  produce  the 
differences  in  wages  between  occupations  may  be  consid- 
ered as  operating  through  supply  and  demand,  they,  or 
rather,  their  effects,  for  sometimes  the  same  cause  oper- 
ates in  both  ways,  may  be  separated  into  two  classes,  ac- 
cording as  they  tend  only  to  raise  apparent  wages  or  as 
they  tend  to  raise  real  wages — that  is,  to  increase  the 
average  reward  for  equal  exertion.  The  high  wages  of 
some  occupations  much  resemble  what  Adam  Smith  com- 
pares them  to,  the  prizes  of  a  lottery,  in  which  the  great 
gain  of  one  is  made  up  from  the  losses  of  many  others. 
This  is  not  only  true  of  the  professions  by  means  of 
which  Dr.  Smith  illustrates  the  principle,  but  is  largely 
true  of  the  wages  of  superintendence  in  mercantile  pur- 
suits, as  shown  by  the  fact  that  over  ninety  per  cent,  of 
the  mercantile  firms  that  commence  business  ultimately 
fail.  The  higher  wages  of  those  occupations  which  can 
be  prosecuted  only  in  certain  states  of  the  weather,  or 
are  otherwise  intermittent  and  uncertain,  are  also  of 
this  class;  while  differences  that  arise  from  hardship, 
discredit,  unhealthiness,  etc.,  imply  differences  of  sac- 
rifice, the  increased  compensation  for  which  only  pre- 
serves the  level  of  equal  returns  for  equal  exertions.  All 
these  differences  are,  in  fact,  equalizations^  arising  from 


210  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  IIL 

circumstances  which,  to  use  the  words  of  Adam  Smith, 
*'make  up  for  a  small  pecuniary  gain  in  some  employ- 
ments and  counterbalance  a  great  one  in  others."  But, 
besides  these  merely  apparent  differences,  there  are  real 
differences  in  wages  between  occupations,  which  are 
caused  by  the  greater  or  less  rarity  of  the  qualities  re- 
quired— greater  abilities  or  skill,  whether  natural  or 
acquired,  commanding  on  the  average  greater  wages. 
Now,  these  qualities,  whether  natural  or  acquired,  are 
essentially  analogous  to  differences  in  strength  and  quick- 
ness in  manual  labor,  and  as  in  manual  labor  the  higher 
wages  paid  the  man  who  can  do  more  would  be  based 
upon  wages  paid  to  those  who  can  do  only  the  average 
amount,  so  wages  in  the  occupations  requiring  superior 
abilities  and  skill  must  depend  upon  the  common  wages 
paid  for  ordinary  abilities  and  skill. 

It  is,  indeed,  evident  from  observation,  as  it  must  be 
from  theory,  that  whatever  be  the  circumstances  which 
produce  the  differences  of  wages  in  different  occupations, 
and  although  they  frequently  vary  in  relation  to  each 
other,  producing,  as  between  time  and  time,  and  place 
and  place,  greater  or  less  relative  differences,  yet  the  rate 
of  wages  in  one  occupation  is  always  dependent  on  the 
rate  in  another,  and  so  on,  down,  until  the  lowest  and 
widest  stratum  of  wages  is  reached,  in  occupations  where 
the  demand  is  more  nearly  uniform  and  in  which  there  is 
the  greatest  freedom  to  engage. 

For,  although  barriers  of  greater  or  less  diflBculty  may 
exist,  the  amount  of  labor  which  can  be  determined  to 
any  particular  pursuit  is  nowhere  absolutely  fixed.  All 
mechanics  could  act  as  laborers,  and  many  laborers  could 
readily  become  mechanics;  all  storekeepers  could  act  as 
shopmen,  and  many  shopmen  could  easily  become  store- 
keepers; many  farmers  would,  upon  inducement,  become 
hunters  or  miners,  fishermen  or  sailors,  and  many  hunt- 
ers, miners,  fishermen,  and  sailors  know  enough  of  farm- 


Outp.  ri  WAGES  AKD  THE  LAW  OF  WAOES.  211 

ing  to  turn  their  hands  to  it  on  demand.  In  each 
occupation  there  are  men  who  unite  it  with  others,  or 
who  alternate  between  occupations,  while  the  young  men 
who  are  constantly  coming  in  to  fill  up  the  ranks  of  labor 
are  drawn  in  the  direction  of  the  strongest  inducements 
and  least  resistances.  And  further  than  this,  all  the 
gradations  of  wages  shade  into  each  other  by  imperceptible 
degrees,  instead  of  being  separated  by  clearly  defined 
gulfs.  The  wages,  even  of  the  poorer  paid  mechanics, 
are  generally  higher  than  the  wages  of  simple  laborers, 
but  there  are  always  some  mechanics  who  do  not,  on  the 
whole,  make  as  much  as  some  laborers;  the  best  paid 
lawyers  receive  much  higher  wages  than  the  best  paid 
clerks,  but  the  best  paid  clerks  make  more  than  some 
lawyers,  and  in  fact  the  worst  paid  clerks  make  more 
than  the  worst  paid  lawyers.  Thus,  on  the  verge  of  each 
occupation,  stand  those  to  whom  the  inducements  be- 
tween one  occupation  and  another  are  so  nicely  balanced 
that  the  slightest  change  is  sufl5cient  to  determine  their 
labor  in  one  direction  or  another.  Thus,  any  increase  or 
decrease  in  the  demand  for  labor  of  a  certain  kind  can- 
not, except  temporarily,  raise  wages  in  that  occupation 
above,  nor  depress  them  below,  the  relative  level  with 
wages  in  other  occupations,  which  is  determined  by  the 
circumstances  previously  adverted  to,  such  as  relative 
agreeableness  or  continuity  of  employment,  etc.  Even, 
as  experience  shows,  where  artificial  barriers  are  imposed 
to  this  interaction,  such  as  limiting  laws,  guild  regula- 
tions, the  establishment  of  caste,  etc.,  they  may  inter- 
fere with,  but  cannot  prevent,  the  maintenance  of  this 
equilibrium.  They  operate  only  as  dams,  which  pile  up 
the  water  of  a  stream  above  its  natural  level,  but  cannot 
prevent  its  overflow. 

Thus,  although  they  may  from  time  to  time  alter  in 
relation  to  each  other,  as  the  circumstances  which  deter-- 
mine  relative  levels  change,  yet  it  is  evident  that  wages 


212  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTIOlf,  Booh  HI. 

in  all  strata  must  ultimately  depend  upon  wages  in  the 
lowest  and  widest  stratum — the  general  rate  of  wages 
rising  or  falling  as  these  rise  or  fall. 

Now,  the  primary  and  fundamental  occupations,  upon 
which,  so  to  speak,  all  others  are  built  up,  are  evidently 
those  which  procure  wealth  directly  from  nature;  hence 
the  law  of  wages  in  them  must  be  the  general  law  of 
wages.  And,  as  wages  in  such  occupations  clearly  de- 
pend upon  what  labor  can  produce  at  the  loAvest  point  of 
natural  productiveness  to  which  it  is  habitually  applied; 
therefore,  wages  generally  depend  upon  the  margin  of 
cultivation,  or,  to  put  it  more  exactly,  upon  the  highest 
point  of  natural  productiveness  to  which  labor  is  free  to 
apply  itself  without  the  payment  of  rent. 

So  obvious  is  this  law  that  it  is  often  apprehended 
without  being  recognized.  It  is  frequently  said  of  such 
countries  as  California  and  Nevada  that  cheap  labor 
would  enormously  aid  their  development,  as  it  would  en- 
able the  working  of  the  poorer  but  most  extensive 
deposits  of  ore.  A  relation  between  low  wages  and  a 
low  point  of  production  is  perceived  by  those  who  talk 
in  this  way,  but  they  invert  cause  and  effect.  It  is  not 
low  wages  which  will  cause  the  working  of  low-grade  ore, 
but  the  extension  of  production  to  the  lower  point  which 
will  diminish  wages.  If  wages  could  be  arbitrarily  forced 
down,  as  has  sometimes  been  attempted  by  statute,  the 
poorer  mines  would  not  be  worked  so  long  as  richer 
mines  could  be  worked.  But  if  the  margin  of  produc- 
tion were  arbitrarily  forced  down,  as  it  might  be,  were 
the  superior  natural  opportunities  in  the  ownership  of 
those  who  chose  rather  to  wait  for  future  increase  of 
value  than  to  permit  them  to  be  used  now,  wages  would 
necessarily  fall. 

The  demonstration  is  complete.     The  law  of  wages  we 
have  thus  obtained  is  that  which  we  previously  obtained 


Chap.  FT.  WAGES  AND  THE  LAW  OF  WAGES.  313 

as  the  corollary  of  the  law  of  rent,  and  it  completely 
harmonizes  with  the  law  of  interest.     It  is,  that: 

Wages  depend  upon  the  margin  of  production,  or  upon 
the  produce  tvhich  labor  can  obtain  at  the  highest  point  of 
natural  productiveness  open  to  it  without  the  payment  of 
rent. 

This  law  of  wages  accords  with  and  explains  universal 
facts  that  without  its  apprehension  seem  unrelated  and 
contradictory.     It  shows  that: 

Where  land  is  free  and  labor  is  unassisted  by  capital, 
the  whole  produce  will  go  to  labor  as  wages. 

"Where  land  is  free  and  labor  is  assisted  by  capital, 
wages  will  consist  of  the  whole  produce,  less  that  part 
necessary  to  induce  the  storing  up  of  labor  as  capital. 

Where  land  is  subject  to  ownership  and  rent  arises, 
wages  will  be  fixed  by  what  labor  could  secure  from  the 
highest  natural  opportunities  open  to  it  without  the 
payment  of  rent. 

Where  natural  opportunities  are  all  monopolized, 
wages  may  be  forced  by  the  competition  among  laborers 
to  the  minimum  at  which  laborers  will  consent  to  repro- 
duce. 

This  necessary  'minimum  of  wages  (which  by  Smith 
and  Ricardo  is  denominated  the  point  of  "natural 
wages,"  and  by  Mill  supposed  to  regulate  wages,  which 
will  be  higher  or  lower  as  the  working  classes  consent  to 
reproduce  at  a  higher  or  lower  standard  of  comfort)  is, 
however,  included  in  the  law  of  wages  as  previously 
stated,  as  it  is  evident  that  the  margin  of  production 
cannot  fall  below  that  point  at  which  enough  will  be  left 
as  wages  to  secure  the  maintenance  of  labor. 

Like  Ricardo's  law  of  rent  of  which  it  is  the  corollary, 
this  law  of  wages  carries  with  it  its  own  proof  and  be- 
comes self-evident  by  mere  statement.  For  it  is  but  an 
application  of  the  central  truth  that  is  the  foundation  of 


314  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  III 

economic  reasoning — that  men  will  seek  to  satisfy  their 
desires  with  the  least  exertion.  The  average  man  will 
not  work  for  an  employer  for  less,  all  things  considered, 
than  he  can  earn  by  working  for  himself;  nor  yet  will  he 
work  for  himself  for  less  than  he  can  earn  by  working 
for  an  employer,  and  hence  the  return  which  labor  can 
secure  from  such  natural  opportunities  as  are  free  to  it 
must  fix  the  wages  which  labor  everywhere  gets.  That 
is  to  say,  the  line  of  rent  is  the  necessary  measure  of  the 
line  of  wages.  In  fact,  the  accepted  law  of  rent  depends 
for  its  recognition  upon  a  previous,  though  in  many  cases 
it  seems  to  be  an  unconscious,  acceptance  of  this  law  of 
wages.  What  makes  it  evident  that  land  of  a  particu- 
lar quality  will  yield  as  rent  the  surplus  of  its  produce 
over  that  of  the  least  productive  land  in  use,  is  the  ap- 
prehension of  the  fact  that  the  owner  of  the  higher 
quality  of  land  can  procure  the  labor  to  work  his  land  by 
the  payment  of  what  that  labor  could  produce  if  exerted 
upon  land  of  the  poorer  quality. 

In  its  simpler  manifestations,  this  law  of  wages  is  rec- 
ognized by  people  who  do  not  trouble  themselves  about 
political  economy,  just  as  the  fact  that  a  heavy  body 
would  fall  to  the  earth  was  long  recognized  by  those  who 
never  thought  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  It  does  not  re- 
quire a  philosopher  to  see  that  if  in  any  country  natural 
opportunities  were  thrown  open  which  would  enable 
laborers  to  make  for  themselves  wages  higher  than  the 
lowest  now  paid,  the  general  rate  of  wages  would  rise; 
while  the  most  ignorant  and  stupid  of  the  placer  miners 
of  early  California  knew  that  as  the  placers  gave  out  or 
were  monopolized,  wages  must  fall.  It  requires  no  fine- 
spun theory  to  explain  why  wages  are  so  high  relatively 
to  production  in  new  countries  where  land  is  yet  unmo- 
nopolized.  The  cause  is  on  the  surface.  One  man  will 
not  work  for  another  for  less  than  his  labor  will  really 
yield,  when  he  can  go  upon  the  next  quarter  section  and 


Chap.  rj.  WAGES  AND  THE   LAW  OF  WAGES.  215 

take  up  a  farm  for  himself.  It  is  only  as  land  becomes 
monopolized  and  these  natural  opportunities  are  shut  off 
from  labor,  that  laborers  are  obliged  to  compete  with 
each  other  for  employment,  and  it  becomes  possible  for 
the  farmer  to  hire  hands  to  do  his  work  while  he  main- 
tains himself  on  the  difference  between  what  their  labor 
produces  and  what  he  pays  them  for  it. 

Adam  Smith  himself  saw  the  cause  of  high  wages  where 
land  was  yet  open  to  settlement,  though  he  failed  to  ap- 
preciate the  importance  and  connection  of  the  fact.  In 
treating  of  the  Causes  of  the  Prosperity  of  New  Colonies 
(Chapter  VII,  Book  IV,  "Wealth  of  Nations,")  he  says: 

"  Every  colonist  gets  more  land  than  he  can  possibly  cultivate. 
He  has  no  rent  and  scarce  any  taxes  to  pay.  *  *  He  is  eager, 
therefore,  to  collect  laborers  from  every  quarter  and  to  pay  them  the 
most  liberal  wages.  But  these  liberal  wages,  joined  to  the  plenty 
and  cheapness  of  land,  soon  make  these  laborers  leave  him  in  order 
to  become  landlords  themselves,  and  to  reward  with  equal  liberality 
other  laborers  who  soon  leave  them  for  the  same  reason  they  left 
their  first  masters." 

This  chapter  contains  numerous  expressions  which, 
like  the  opening  sentence  in  the  chapter  on  The  Wages 
of  Labor,  show  that  Adam  Smith  failed  to  appreciate 
the  true  laws  of  the  distribution  of  wealth  only  because 
he  turned  away  from  the  more  primitive  forms  of  society 
to  look  for  first  principles  amid  complex  social  manifes- 
tations, where  he  was  blinded  by  a  pre-accepted  theory 
of  the  functions  of  capital,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  by  a 
vague  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  which,  two  years  after 
his  death,  was  formulated  by  Malthus.  And  it  is  impos- 
sible to  read  the  works  of  the  economists  who  since  the 
time  of  Smith  have  endeavored  to  build  up  and  elucidate 
the  science  of  political  economy  without  seeing  how,  over 
and  over  again,  they  stumble  over  the  law  of  wages  with- 
out once  recognizing  it.  Yet,  "if  it  were  a  dog  it  would 
bite  them!"    Indeed,  it  is  diflficult  to  resist  the  impres- 


216  THE  LATVS  OF  DTSTRIBUTIOIT.  Book  IH 

sion  that  some  of  them  really  saw  this  law  of  wages,  but, 
fearful  of  the  practical  conclusions  to  which  it  would 
lead,  preferred  to  ignore  and  cover  it  up,  rather  than  use 
it  as  the  key  to  problems  which  without  it  are  so  perplex- 
ing. A  great  truth  to  an  age  which  has  rejected  and 
trampled  on  it,  is  not  a  word  of  peace,  but  a  sword! 

Perhaps  it  may  be  well  to  remind  the  reader,  before 
closing  this  chapter,  of  what  has  been  before  stated — 
that  I  am  using  the  word  wages  not  in  the  sense  of  a 
quantity,  but  in  the  sense  of  a  proportion.  When  I  say 
that  wages  fall  as  rent  rises,  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
quantity  of  wealth  obtained  by  laborers  as  wages  is  nec- 
essarily less,  but  that  the  proportion  which  it  bears  to 
the  whole  produce  is  necessarily  less.  The  proportion 
may  diminish  while  the  quantity  remains  the  same  or 
even  increases.  If  the  margin  of  cultivation  descends 
from  the  productive  point  which  we  will  call  25,  to 
the  productive  point  we  will  call  20,  the  rent  of  all 
lands  that  before  paid  rent  will  increase  by  this  differ- 
ence, and  the  proportion  of  the  whole  produce  which 
goes  to  laborers  as  wages  will  to  the  same  extent  dimin- 
ish; but  if,  in  the  meantime,  the  advance  of  the  arts  or 
the  economies  that  become  possible  with  greater  popula- 
tion have  so  increased  the  productive  power  of  labor  that 
at  20  the  same  exertion  will  produce  as  much  wealth 
as  before  at  25,  laborers  will  get  as  wages  as  great  a 
quantity  as  before,  and  the  relative  fall  of  wages  will 
not  be  noticeable  in  any  diminution  of  the  necessaries 
or  comforts  of  the  laborer,  but  only  in  the  increased 
value  of  land  and  the  greater  incomes  and  more  lavish 
expenditure  of  the  rent-receiving  class. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  COBRELATION  AND   CO-OEDINATION  OP  THESE  LAWS. 

The  conclusions  we  have  reached  as  to  the  laws  which 
govern  the  distribution  of  wealth  recast  a  large  and  most 
important  part  of  the  science  of  political  economy,  as  at 
present  taught,  overthrowing  some  of  its  most  highly 
elaborated  theories  and  shedding  a  new  light  on  some  of 
its  most  important  problems.  Yet,  in  doing  this,  no 
disputable  ground  has  been  occupied;  not  a  single  funda- 
mental principle  advanced  that  is  not  already  recognized. 

The  law  of  interest  and  the  law  of  wages  which  we 
have  substituted  for  those  now  taught  are  necessary  de- 
ductions from  the  great  law  which  alone  makes  any 
science  of  political  economy  possible — the  all-compelling 
law  that  is  as  inseparable  from  the  human  mind  as  at- 
traction is  inseparable  from  matter,  and  without  which 
it  would  be  impossible  to  previse  or  calculate  upon  any 
human  action,  the  most  trivial  or  the  most  important. 
This  fundamental  law,  that  men  seek  to  gratify  their  de- 
sires with  the  least  exertion,  becomes,  when  viewed  in  its 
relation  to  one  of  the  factors  of  production,  the  law  of 
rent;  in  relation  to  another,  the  law  of  interest;  and  in 
relation  to  a  third,  the  law  of  wages.  And  in  accepting 
the  law  of  rent,  which,  since  the  time  of  Eicardo,  has 
been  accepted  by  every  economist  of  standing,  and 
which,  like  a  geometrical  axiom,  has  but  to  be  under- 
stood to  compel  assent,  the  law  of  interest  and  law  of 
wages,  as  I  have  stated  them,  are  inferentially  accepted, 
as  its  necessary  sequences.  In  fact,  it  is  only  relatively 
that  they  can  be  called  sequences,  as  in  the  recognition 
of  the  law  of  rent  they  too  must  be  recognized.     For  on 


218 


THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION". 


Book  HI. 


•what  depends  the  recognition  of  the  law  of  rent?  Evi- 
dently upon  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  effect  of 
competition  is  to  prevent  the  return  to  labor  and  capital 
being  anywhere  greater  than  upon  the  poorest  land  in 
use.  It  is  in  seeing  this  that  we  see  that  the  owner  of 
land  will  be  able  to  claim  as  rent  all  of  its  produce  which 
exceeds  what  would  be  yielded  to  an  equal  application  of 
labor  and  capital  on  the  poorest  land  in  use. 

The  harmony  and  correlation  of  the  laws  of  distribu- 
tion as  we  have  now  apprehended  them  are  in  striking 
contrast  with  the  want  of  harmony  which  characterizes 
these  laws  as  presented  by  the  current  political  economy. 
Let  us  state  them  side  by  side: 

The  Current  Statement.  The  True  Statement. 


Rent  depends  on  the  margin 
of  cultivation,  rising  as  it 
falls  and  falling  as  it  rises. 

Wages  depend  upon  the 
ratio  between  the  number 
of  laborers  and  the  amount 
of  capital  devoted  to  their 
employment. 


Eent  depends  on  the  margin 
of  cultivation,  rising  as  it 
falls  and  falling  as  it  rises. 

Wages  depend  on  the  mar- 
gin of  cultivation,  falling 
as  it  falls  and  rising  as  it 
rises. 


Interest  (its  ratio  with  wa- 
ges being  fixed  by  the  net 
power  of  increase  which 
attaches  to  capital)  de- 
pends on  the  margin  of 
cultivation,  falling  as  it 
falls  and  rising  as  it  rises. 


Interest  depends  upon  the 
equation  between  the  sup- 
ply of  and  demand  for 
capital;  or,  as  is  stated  of 
profits,  upon  wages  (or 
the  cost  of  labor),  rising 
as  wages  fall,  and  falling 
as  wages  rise. 

In  the  current  statement  the  laws  of  distribution  have 
no  common  center,  no  mutual  relation;  they  are  not  the 
correlating  divisions  of  a  whole,  but  measures  of  differ- 
ent qualities.  In  the  statement  we  have  given,  they 
spring  from  one  point,  support  and  supplement  each 
other,  and  form  the  correlating  divisions  of  a  complete 
whole. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  STATICS  OF  THE   PROBLEM  THUS  EXPLAINED. 

We  have  now  obtained  a  clear,  simple,  and  consistent 
theory  of  the  distribution  of  wealth,  which  accords  with 
first  principles  and  existing  facts,  and  which,  when  under- 
stood, will  commend  itself  as  self-evident. 

Before  working  out  this  theory,  I  have  deemed  it  nec- 
essary to  show  conclusively  the  insufficiency  of  current 
theories;  for,  in  thought,  as  in  action,  the  majority  of 
men  do  but  follow  their  leaders,  and  a  theory  of  wages 
which  has  not  merely  the  support  of  the  highest  names, 
but  is  firmly  rooted  in  common  opinions  and  prejudices, 
will,  until  it  has  been  proved  untenable,  prevent  any 
other  theory  from  being  even  considered,  just  as  the 
theory  that  the  earth  was  the  center  of  the  universe  pre- 
vented any  consideration  of  the  theory  that  it  revolves 
on  its  own  axis  and  circles  round  the  sun,  until  it  was 
clearly  shown  that  the  apparent  movements  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  could  not  be  explained  in  accordance 
with  the  theory  of  the  fixity  of  the  earth. 

There  is  in  truth  a  marked  resemblance  between  the 
science  of  political  economy,  as  at  present  taught,  and 
the  science  of  astronomy,  as  taught  previous  to  the  rec- 
ognition of  the  Copernican  theory.  The  devices  by 
which  the  current  political  economy  endeavors  to  explain 
the  social  phenomena  that  are  now  forcing  themselves 
upon  the  attention  of  the  civilized  world  may  well  be 
compared  to  the  elaborate  system  of  cycles  and  epicycles 
constructed  by  the  learned  to  explain  the  celestial  phe- 
nomena in  a  manner  according  with  the  dogmas  of  author- 


220  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION".  Book  IIL 

ity  and  the  rude  impressions  and  prejudices  of  the  un- 
learned. And,  just  as  the  observations  which  showed 
that  this  theory  of  cycles  and  epicycles  could  not  explain 
all  the  phenomena  of  the  heavens  cleared  the  way  for 
the  consideration  of  the  simpler  theory  that  supplanted 
it,  so  will  a  recognition  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  current 
theories  to  account  for  social  phenomena  clear  the  way 
for  the  consideration  of  a  theory  that  will  give  to  polit- 
ical economy  all  the  simplicity  and  harmony  which  the 
Copernican  theory  gave  to  the  science  of  astronomy. 

But  at  this  point  the  parallel  ceases.  That  *Hhe  fixed 
and  steadfast  earth"  should  be  really  whirling  through 
space  with  inconceivable  velocity  is  repugnant  to  the 
first  apprehensions  of  men  in  every  state  and  situation; 
but  the  truth  I  wish  to  make  clear  is  naturally  perceived, 
and  has  been  recognized  in  the  infancy  of  every  people, 
being  obscured  only  by  the  complexities  of  the  civilized 
state,  the  warpings  of  selfish  interests,  and  the  false  di- 
rection which  the  speculations  of  the  learned  have  taken. 
To  recognize  it,  we  have  but  to  come  back  to  first  prin- 
ciples and  heed  simple  perceptions.  Nothing  can  be 
clearer  than  the  proposition  that  the  failure  of  wages  to 
increase  with  increasing  productive  power  is  due  to  the 
increase  of  rent. 

Three  things  unite  to  production — labor,  capital,  and 
land. 

Three  parties  divide  the  produce — the  laborer,  the 
capitalist,  and  the  land  owner. 

If,  with  an  increase  of  production  the  laborer  gets  no 
more  and  the  capitalist  no  more  it  is  a  necessary  infer- 
ence that  the  land  owner  reaps  the  whole  gain. 

And  the  facts  agree  with  the  inference.  Though 
neither  wages  nor  interest  anywhere  increase  as  material 
progress  goes  on,  yet  the  invariable  accompaniment  and 
mark  of  material  progress  is  the  increase  of  rent — the 
rise  of  land  values. 


Chap.  Vni.      STATICS  OF  THE  PROBLEM  EXPLAINED.  331 

The  increase  of  rent  explains  why  wages  and  interest 
do  not  increase.  The  cause  which  gives  to  the  land 
holder  is  the  cause  which  denies  to  the  laborer  and  capi- 
talist. That  wages  and  interest  are  higher  in  new  than 
in  old  countries  is  not,  as  the  standard  economists  say, 
because  nature  makes  a  greater  return  to  the  application 
of  labor  and  capital,  but  because  land  is  cheaper,  and, 
therefore,  as  a  smaller  proportion  of  the  return  is  taken 
by  rent,  labor  and  capital  can  keep  for  their  share  a 
larger  proportion  of  what  nature  does  return.  It  is  not 
the  total  produce,  but  the  net  produce,  after  rent  has 
been  taken  from  it,  that  determines  what  can  be  divided 
as  wages  and  interest.  Hence,  the  rate  of  wages  and  in- 
terest is  everywhere  fixed,  not  so  much  by  the  produc- 
tiveness of  labor  as  by  the  value  of  land.  Wherever  the 
value  of  land  is  relatively  low,  wages  and  interest  are 
relatively  high;  wherever  land  is  relatively  high,  wages 
and  interest  are  relatively  low. 

If  production  had  not  passed  the  simple  stage  in  which 
all  labor  is  directly  applied  to  the  land  and  all  wages  are 
paid  in  its  produce,  the  fact  that  when  the  land  owner 
takes  a  larger  portion  the  laborer  must  put  up  with  a 
smaller  portion  could  not  be  lost  sight  of. 

But  the  complexities  of  production  in  the  civilized 
state,  in  which  so  great  a  part  is  borne  by  exchange,  and 
BO  much  labor  is  bestowed  upon  materials  after  they  have 
been  separated  from  the  land,  though  they  may  to  the 
unthinking  disguise,  do  not  alter  the  fact  that  all  pro- 
duction is  still  the  union  of  the  two  factors,  land  and 
labor,  and  that  rent  (the  share  of  the  land  holder)  can- 
not be  increased  except  at  the  expense  of  wages  (the 
share  of  the  laborer)  and  interest  (the  share  of  capital). 
Just  as  the  portion  of  the  crop,  which  in  the  simpler 
forms  of  industrial  organization  the  owner  of  agricul- 
tural land  receives  at  the  end  of  the  harvest  as  his  rent, 
lessens  the  amount  left  to  the  cultivator  as  wages  and 


2^%  THE  LAWS  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  Book  HI 

interest,  so  does  the  rental  of  land  on  which  a  manufac- 
turing or  commercial  city  is  built  lessen  the  amount 
which  can  be  divided  as  wages  and  interest  between  the 
laborer  and  capital  there  engaged  in  the  production  and 
exchange  of  wealth. 

In  short,  the  value  of  land  depending  wholly  upon  the 
power  which  its  ownership  gives  of  appropriating  wealth 
created  by  labor,  the  increase  of  land  values  is  always  at 
the  expense  of  the  value  of  labor.  And,  hence,  that  the 
increase  of  productive  power  does  not  increase  wages,  is 
because  it  does  increase  the  value  of  land.  Rent  swal- 
lows up  the  whole  gain  and  pauperism  accompanies 
progress. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  refer  to  facts.  They  will  suggest 
themselves  to  the  reader.  It  is  the  general  fact,  observ- 
able everywhere,  that  as  the  value  of  land  increases,  so 
does  the  contrast  between  wealth  and  want  appear.  It  is 
the  universal  fact,  that  where  the  value  of  land  is  high- 
est, civilization  exhibits  the  greatest  luxury  side  by  side 
with  the  most  piteous  destitution.  To  see  human  beings 
in  the  most  abject,  the  most  helpless  and  hopeless  con- 
dition, you  must  go,  not  to  the  unfenced  prairies  and  the 
log  cabins  of  new  clearings  in  the  backwoods,  where  man 
single-handed  is  commencing  the  struggle  with  nature, 
and  land  is  yet  worth  nothing,  but  to  the  great  cities, 
where  the  ownership  of  a  little  patch  of  ground  is  a 
fortune. 


BOOK  IV. 

EFFECT  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS  UPON  THE 
DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 


CHAPTER      I. — ^THE  DYNAMICS  OF  THE  PROBLEM    YET  TO 

SEEK. 
CHAPTER     II. — EFFECT  OF  INCREASE  OF  POPULATION"  UPON 

THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 
CHAPTER  III. — EFFECT     OF     IMPROVEMENTS   IN  THE    ARTS 

UPON  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 
CHAPTER    IV. — EFFECT  OF  THE    EXPECTATION    RAISED  BY 

UATERIAL  PROGRESS. 


Hitherto,  it  is  questionable  if  all  the  mechanical  inventions  yet 
made  have  lightened  the  day's  toil  of  any  human  being. — John 
Biua/rt  Mill. 


Do  ye  hear  the  children  weeping,  O  my  brothers, 

Ere  the  sorrow  comes  with  years? 
They  are  leaning  their  young  heads  against  their  mothers. 

And  that  cannot  stop  their  tears. 
The  young  lambs  are  bleating  in  the  meadows; 

The  young  birds  are  chirping  in  the  nest; 
The  young  fawns  are  playing  with  the  shadows; 

The  young  flowers  are  blowing  toward  the  west— 
But  the  young,  young  children,  O,  my  brothers. 

They  are  weeping  bitterly! 
They  are  weeping  in  the  playtime  of  the  others, 
In  the  country  of  the  free. 

—Mn.  Browning, 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    DYNAMICS  OF  THE  PROBLEM  TBT  TO  SEEK 

In  identifying  rent  as  the  receiver  of  the  increased  pro- 
duction which  material  progress  gives,  but  which  labor 
fails  to  obtain;  in  seeing  that  the  antagonism  of  interests 
is  not  between  labor  and  capital,  as  is  popularly  believed, 
but  is  in  reality  between  labor  and  capital  on  the  one  side 
and  land  ownership  on  the  other,  we  have  reached  a  con- 
clusion that  has  most  important  practical  bearings.  But 
it  is  not  worth  while  to  dwell  on  them  now,  for  we  have 
not  yet  fully  solved  the  problem  which  was  at  the  outset 
proposed.  To  say  that  wages  remain  low  because  rent 
advances  is  like  saying  that  a  steamboat  moves  because 
its  wheels  turn  around.  The  further  question  is.  What 
causes  rent  to  advance?  What  is  the  force  or  necessity 
that,  as  productive  power  increases,  distributes  a  greater 
and  greater  proportion  of  the  produce  as  rent? 

The  only  cause  pointed  out  by  Ricardo  as  advancing 
rent  is  the  increase  of  population,  which  by  requiring 
larger  supplies  of  food  necessitates  the  extension  of  culti- 
vation to  inferior  lands,  or  to  points  of  inferior  produc- 
sion  on  the  same  lands,  and  in  current  works  of  other 
authors  attention  is  so  exclusively  directed  to  the  exten- 
sion of  production  from  superior  to  inferior  lands  as  the 
cause  of  advancing  rents  that  Mr.  Carey  (followed  by 
Professor  Perry  and  others)  has  imagined  that  he  has 
overthrown  the  Ricardian  theory  of  rent  by  denying  that 
the  progress  of  agriculture  is  from  better  to  worse  lands.* 

*A3tothi8,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  say:  (1)  That  the  general 
fact,  as  shown  by  the  progress  of  agriculture  in  the  newer  States  of 


226  EFPECT8  OP  MATEEIAL  PB0GEES8.  Booh  IV. 

Now,  while  it  is  unquestionably  true  that  the  increas- 
ing pressure  of  population  which  compels  a  resort  to  in- 
ferior points  of  production  will  raise  rents,  and  does 
raise  rents,  I  do  not  think  that  all  the  deductions  com- 
monly made  from  this  principle  are  valid,  nor  yet  that  it 
fully  accounts  for  the  increase  of  rent  as  material  prog- 
ress goes  on.  There  are  evidently  other  causes  which 
conspire  to  raise  rent,  but  which  seem  to  have  been 
wholly  or  partially  hidden  by  the  erroneous  views  as  to 
the  functions  of  capital  and  genesis  of  wages  which  have 
been  current.  To  see  what  these  are,  and  how  they 
operate,  let  us  trace  the  effect  of  material  progress  upon 
the  distribution  of  wealth. 

The  changes  which  constitute  or  contribute  to  material 
progress  are  three:  (1)  increase  in  population;  (2)  im- 
provements in  the  arts  of  production  and  exchange;  and 
(3)  improvements  in  knowledge,  education,  government, 
police,  manners,  and  morals,  so  far  as  they  increase  the 
power  of  producing  wealth.  Material  progress,  as  com- 
monly understood,  consists  of  these  three  elements  or 
directions  of  progression,  in  all  of  which  the  progressive 
nations  have  for  some  time  past  been  advancing,  though 
in  different  degrees.     As,  considered  in  the  light  of  ma- 

the  Union  and  by  the  character  of  the  land  left  out  of  cultivation  in 
the  older,  is  that  the  course  of  cultivation  is  from  the  better  to  the 
worse  qualities  of  land.  (3)  That,  whether  the  course  of  production 
be  from  the  absolutely  better  to  the  absolutely  worse  lands  or  the 
reverse  (and  there  is  much  to  indicate  that  better  or  worse  in  this 
connection  merely  relates  to  our  knowledge,  and  that  future  advances 
may  discover  compensating  qualities  in  portions  of  the  earth  now 
esteemed  most  sterile),  it  is  always,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  human 
mind,  mttst  always  tend  to  be,  from  land  under  existing  conditions 
deemed  better,  to  land  under  existing  conditions  deemed  worse.  (3) 
That  Ricardo's  law  of  rent  does  not  depend  upon  the  direction  of  the 
extension  of  cultivation,  but  upon  the  proposition  that  if  land  of  a 
certain  quality  will  yield  something,  land  of  a  better  quality  will 
yield  more. 


Chap.f        DYNAMICS  OF  THE  PBOBLEM  YET  TO  SEEK.      227 

terial  forces  or  economies,  the  increase  of  knowledge,  th?, 
betterment  of  government,  etc.,  have  the  same  effect  as 
improvements  in  the  arts,  it  will  not  be  necessary  in  this 
view  to  consider  them  separately.  What  bearing  intel- 
lectual or  moral  progress,  merely  as  such,  has  upon  our 
problem  we  may  hereafter  consider.  We  are  at  present 
dealing  with  material  progress,  to  which  these  things  ^ 
contribute  only  as  they  increase  wealth-producing  power, 
and  shall  see  their  effects  when  we  see  the  effect  of 
improvements  in  the  arts. 

To  ascertain  the  effects  of  material  progress  upon  the 
distribution  of  wealth,  let  us,  therefore,  consider  the 
effects  of  increase  of  population  apart  from  improvement 
in  the  arts,  and  then  the  effect  of  improvement  in  the 
arts  apart  from  increase  of  population. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  EFFECT    OF     INCREASE     OF     POPULATION     UPON    THB 
DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 

The  manner  in  which  increasing  population  advances 
rent,  as  explained  and  illustrated  in  current  treatises,  is 
that  the  increased  demand  for  subsistence  forces  pro- 
duction to  inferior  soil  or  to  inferior  productive  points. 
Thus,  if,  with  a  given  population,  the  margin  of  cultiva- 
tion is  at  30,  all  lands  of  productive  power  over  30  will 
pay  rent.  If  the  population  be  doubled,  an  additional 
supply  is  required,  which  cannot  be  obtained  without  an 
extension  of  cultivation  that  will  cause  lands  to  yield 
rent  that  before  yielded  none.  If  the  extension  be  to  20, 
then  all  the  land  between  20  and  30  will  yield  rent  and 
have  a  value,  and  all  land  over  30  will  yield  increased 
rent  and  have  increased  value. 

It  is  here  that  the  Malthusian  doctrine  receives  from 
the  current  elucidations  of  the  theory  of  rent  the  sup- 
port of  which  I  spoke  when  enumerating  the  causes  that 
have  combined  to  give  that  doctrine  an  almost  undis- 
puted sway  in  current  thought.  According  to  the  Mal- 
thusian theory,  the  pressure  of  population  against  sub- 
sistence becomes  progressively  harder  as  population 
increases,  and  although  two  hands  come  into  the  world 
with  every  new  mouth,  it  becomes,  to  use  the  language 
of  John  Stuart  Mill,  harder  and  harder  for  the  new 
hands  to  supply  the  new  mouths.  According  to  Kicardo*s 
theory  of  rent,  rent  arises  from  the  difference  in  produc- 
tiveness of  the  lands  in  use,  and  as  explained  by  Kicardo 
and  the  economists  who  have  followed  him>  the  advance 


Chap.  IT.  IKCEEASE  OF  POPULATION.  229 

in  rents  which,  experience  shows,  accompanies  increasing 
population,  is  caused  by  the  inability  of  procuring  more 
food  except  at  a  greater  cost,  which  thus  forces  the  mar- 
gin of  population  to  lower  and  lower  points  of  produc- 
tion, commensurately  increasing  rent.  Thus  the  two 
theories,  as  I  have  before  explained,  are  made  to  har- 
monize and  blend,  the  law  of  rent  becoming  but  a  special 
application  of  the  more  general  law  propounded  by  Mal- 
thus,  and  the  advance  of  rents  with  increasing  popula- 
tion a  demonstration  of  its  resistless  operation.  I  refer 
to  this  incidentally,  because  it  now  lies  in  our  way  to  see 
the  misapprehension  which  has  enlisted  the  doctrine  of 
rent  in  the  support  of  a  theory  to  which  it  in  reality 
gives  no  countenance.  The  Malthusian  theory  has  been 
already  disposed  of,  and  the  cumulative  disproof  which 
will  prevent  the  recurrence  of  a  lingering  doubt  will  be 
given  when  it  is  shown,  further  on,  that  the  phenomena 
attributed  to  the  pressure  of  population  against  subsist- 
ence would,  under  existing  conditions,  manifest  them- 
selves were  population  to  remain  stationary. 

The  misapprehension  to  which  I  now  refer,  and  which, 
to  a  proper  understanding  of  the  effect  of  increase  of 
population  upon  the  distribution  of  wealth,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  clear  up,  is  the  presumption,  expressed  or  implied 
in  all  the  current  reasoning  upon  the  subject  of  rent  in 
connection  with  population,  that  the  recourse  to  lower 
points  of  production  involves  a  smaller  aggregate  produce 
in  proportion  to  the  labor  expended;  though  that  this  is 
not  always  the  case  is  clearly  recognized  in  connection 
with  agricultural  improvements,  which,  to  use  the  words 
of  Mill,  are  considered  "as  a  partial  relaxation  of  the 
bonds  which  confine  the  increase  of  population."  But  it 
is  not  involved  even  where  there  is  no  advance  in  the 
arts,  and  the  recourse  to  lower  points  of  production  is 
clearly  the  result  of  the  increased  demand  of  an  increased 
population.    For  increased  population,  of    itself,   and 


230  EFFECTS  OF  MATEKIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IV, 

without  any  advance  in  the  arts,  implies  an  increase  in 
the  productive  power  of  labor.     The  labor  of  100  men, 
other  things  being  equal,  will  produce  much  more  than 
one  hundred  times  as  much  as  the  labor  of  one  man,  and 
the  labor  of  1,000  men  much  more  than  ten  times  as 
much  as  the  labor  of  100  men;  and,  so,  with  every  addi- 
tional pair  of  hands  which  increasing  population  brings, 
there  is  a  more  than  proportionate  addition  to  the  pro- 
ductive power  of  labor.     Thus,  with  an  increasing  popu- 
lation, there  may  be  a  recourse  to  lower  natural  powers 
of  production,  not  only  without  any  diminution  in  the 
average  production  of  wealth  as  compared  to  labor,  but 
without  any  diminution  at  the  lowest  point.     If  popu- 
lation be  doubled,  land  of  but  20  productiveness  may 
yield  to  the  same   amount  of  labor  as  much   as   land 
of  30  productiveness  could  before  yield.     For  it  must 
not    be  forgotten   (what   often   is  forgotten)  that  the 
productiveness  either  of  land  or  labor  is  not  to  be  meas- 
ured in  any  one  thing,  but  in  all  desired  things.     A 
settler  and  his  family  may  raise  as  much  corn  on  land 
a  hundred    miles    away  from    the    nearest   habitation 
as  they  could  raise  were  their  land  in  the  center  of  a 
populous  district.     But  in  the  populous  district  they 
could  obtain  with  the  same  labor  as  good  a  living  from 
much  poorer  land,  or  from  land  of  equal  quality  could 
make  as  good  a  living  after  paying  a  high  rent,  because 
in  the  midst  of  a  large  population  their  labor  would  have 
become  more  effective;  not,  perhaps,  in  the  production 
of  corn,  but  in  the  production  of  wealth  generally — or 
the  obtaining  of  all  the  commodities  and  services  which 
are  the  real  object  of  their  labor. 

But  even  where  there  is  a  diminution  in  the  produc- 
tiveness of  labor  at  the  lowest  point — that  is  to  say, 
where  the  increasing  demand  for  wealth  has  driven  pro- 
duction to  a  lower  point  of  natural  productiveness  than 
the  addition  to  the  power  of  labor  from  increasing  popu- 


Ckap.n.  INCREASE  OF  POPULATION.  231 

lation  suflBcea  to  make  up  for — it  does  not  follow  that  the 
aggregate  production,  as  compared  with  the  aggregate 
labor,  has  been  lessened. 

Let  us  suppose  land  of  diminishing  qualities.  The  beat 
would  naturally  be  settled  first,  and  as  population  in- 
creased production  would  take  in  the  next  lower  quality, 
and  so  on.  But,  as  the  increase  of  population,  by  per- 
mitting greater  economies,  adds  to  the  effectiveness  of 
labor,  the  cause  which  brought  each  quality  of  land  suc- 
cessively into  cultivation  would  at  the  same  time  increase 
the  amount  of  wealth  that  the  same  quality  of  labor 
could  produce  from  it.  But  it  would  also  do  more  than 
this — it  would  increase  the  power  of  producing  wealth 
on  all  the  superior  lands  already  in  cultivation.  If  the 
relations  of  quantity  and  quality  were  such  that  increas- 
ing population  added  to  the  effectiveness  of  labor  faster 
than  it  compelled  a  resort  to  less  productive  qualities  of 
land,  though  the  margin  of  cultivation  would  fall  and 
rent  would  rise,  the  minimum  return  to  labor  would  in- 
crease. That  is  to  say,  though  wages  as  a  proportion 
would  fall,  wages  as  a  quantity  would  rise.  The  average 
production  of  wealth  would  increase.  If  the  relations 
were  such  that  the  increasing  effectiveness  of  labor  just 
compensated  for  the  diminishing  productiveness  of  the 
land  as  it  was  called  into  use,  the  effect  of  increasing 
population  would  be  to  increase  rent  by  lowering  the 
margin  of  cultivation  without  reducing  wages  as  a 
quantity,  and  to  increase  the  average  production.  If  we 
now  suppose  population  still  increasing,  but,  between 
the  poorest  quality  of  land  in  use  and  the  next  lower 
quality,  to  be  a  difference  so  great  that  the  increased 
power  of  labor  which  comes  with  the  increased  popula- 
tion that  brings  it  into  cultivation  cannot  compensate 
for  it — the  minimum  return  to  labor  will  be  reduced,  and 
with  the  rise  of  rents,  wages  will  fall,  not  only  as  a  pro- 
portion, but  as  a  quantity.     But  unless  the  descent  in 


232  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL   PKOGRESS.  Book  IV. 

the  quality  of  land  is  far  more  precipitous  than  we  can 
well  imagine,  or  than,  I  think,  ever  exists,  the  average 
production  will  still  be  increased,  for  the  increased  effect- 
iveness which  comes  by  reason  of  the  increased  popula- 
tion that  compels  resort  to  the  inferior  quality  of  land 
attaches  to  all  labor,  and  the  gain  on  the  superior  quali- 
ties of  land  will  more  than  compensate  for  the  diminished 
production  on  the  quality  last  brought  in.  The  aggre- 
gate wealth  production,  as  compared  with  the  aggregate 
expenditure  of  labor,  will  be  greater,  though  its  distribu- 
tion will  be  more  unequal. 

Thus,  increase  of  population,  as  it  operates  to  extend 
production  to  lower  natural  levels,  operates  to  increase 
rent  and  reduce  wages  as  a  proportion,  and  may  or  may 
not  reduce  wages  as  a  quantity;  while  it  seldom  can,  and 
probably  never  does,  reduce  the  aggregate  production  of 
wealth  as  compared  with  the  aggregate  expenditure  of 
labor,  but  on  the  contrary  increases,  and  frequently 
largely  increases  it. 

But  while  the  increase  of  population  thus  increases 
rent  by  lowering  the  margin  of  cultivation,  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  look  upon  this  as  the  only  mode  by  which  rent 
advances  as  population  grows.  Increasing  population 
increases  rent,  without  reducing  the  margin  of  cultiva- 
tion; and  notwithstanding  the  dicta  of  such  writers  as 
McCulloch,  who  assert  that  rent  would  not  arise  were 
there  an  unbounded  extent  of  equally  good  land,  in- 
creases it  without  reference  to  the  natural  qualities  of 
land,  for  the  increased  powers  of  co-operation  and  ex- 
change which  come  with  increased  population  are 
equivalent  to — nay,  I  think  we  can  say  without  meta- 
phor, that  they  give — an  increased  capacity  to  land. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  merely  that,  like  an  improvement 
in  the  methods  or  tools  of  production,  the  increased 
power  which  comes  with  increased  population  gives  to 
the  same  labor  an  increased  result,  which  is  equivalent 


Chap.n.  INCREASE  OP  POPULATION.  233 

to  an  increase  in  the  natural  powers  of  land;  but  that 
it  brings  out  a  superior  power  in  labor,  which  is  localized 
on  land — which  attaches  not  to  labor  generally,  but  only 
to  labor  exerted  on  particular  land;  and  which  thus  in- 
heres in  the  land  as  much  as  any  qualities  of  soil,  climate, 
mineral  deposit,  or  natural  situation,  and  passes,  as  they 
do,  with  the  possession  of  the  land. 

An  improvement  in  the  method  of  cultivation  which, 
with  the  same  outlay,  will  give  two  crops  a  year  in  place 
of  one,  or  an  improvement  in  tools  and  machinery  which 
will  double  the  result  of  labor,  will  manifestly,  on  a  par- 
ticular piece  of  ground,  have  the  same  effect  on  the  prod- 
uce as  a  doubling  of  the  fertility  of  the  land.  But  the 
difference  is  in  this  respect — the  improvement  in  method 
or  in  tools  can  be  utilized  on  any  land;  but  the  improve- 
ment in  fertility  can  be  utilized  only  on  the  particular 
land  to  which  it  applies.  Now,  in  large  part,  the  in- 
creased productiveness  of  labor  which  arises  from  in- 
creased population  can  be  utilized  only  on  particular 
land,  and  on  particular  land  in  greatly  varying  degrees. 

Here,  let  us  imagine,  is  an  unbounded  savannah, 
stretching  off  in  unbroken  sameness  of  grass  and  flower, 
tree  and  rill,  till  the  traveler  tires  of  the  monotony. 
Along  comes  the  wagon  of  the  first  immigrant.  Where 
to  settle  he  cannot  tell — every  acre  seems  as  good  as 
every  other  acre.  As  to  wood,  as  to  water,  as  to  fertil- 
ity, as  to  situation,  there  is  absolutely  no  choice,  and  he 
is  perplexed  by  the  embarrassment  of  richness.  Tired 
out  with  the  search  for  one  place  that  is  better  than 
another,  he  stops — somewhere,  anywhere — and  starts  to 
make  himself  a  home.  The  soil  is  virgin  and  rich,  game 
is  abundant,  the  streams  flash  with  the  finest  trout. 
Nature  is  at  her  very  best.  He  has  what,  were  he  in  a 
populous  district,  would  make  him  rich;  but  he  is  very 
poor.  To  say  nothing  of  the  mental  craving,  which 
would  lead  him  to  welcome  the  sorriest  stranger,  he 


234  BFFECT8   OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Booh  IV. 

labors  under  all  the  material  disadvantages  of  solitnde. 
He  can  get  no  temporary  assistance  for  any  work  that 
requires  a  greater  union  of  strength  than  that  afforded 
by  his  own  family,  or  by  such  help  as  he  can  permanently 
keep.  Though  he  has  cattle,  he  cannot  often  have  fresh 
meat,  for  to  get  a  beefsteak  he  must  kill  a  bullock.  He 
must  be  his  own  blacksmith,  wagonmaker,  carpenter,  and 
cobbler — in  short,  a  "jack  of  all  trades  and  master  of 
none."  He  cannot  have  his  children  schooled,  for,  to 
do  so,  he  must  himself  pay  and  maintain  a  teacher. 
Such  things  as  he  cannot  produce  himself,  he  must  buy 
in  quantities  and  keep  on  hand,  or  else  go  without,  for 
he  cannot  be  constantly  leaving  his  work  and  making  a 
long  journey  to  the  verge  of  civilization;  and  when 
forced  to  do  so,  the  getting  of  a  vial  of  medicine  or  the 
replacement  of  a  broken  auger  may  cost  him  the  labor  of 
himself  and  horses  for  days.  Under  such  circumstances, 
though  nature  is  prolific,  the  man  is  poor.  It  is  an  easy 
matter  for  him  to  get  enough  to  eat;  but  beyond  this, 
his  labor  will  suffice  to  satisfy  only  the  simplest  wants  in 
the  rudest  way. 

Soon  there  comes  another  immigrant.  Although 
every  quarter  section  of  the  boundless  plain  is  as  good 
as  every  other  quarter  section,  he  is  not  beset  by  any 
embarrassment  as  to  where"  to  settle.  Though  the  land 
is  the  same,  there  is  one  place  that  is  clearly  better  for 
him  than  any  other  place,  and  that  is  where  there  is 
already  a  settler  and  he  may  have  a  neighbor.  He  set- 
tles by  the  side  of  the  first  comer,  whose  condition  is  at 
once  greatly  improved,  and  to  whom  many  things  are 
now  possible  that  were  before  impossible,  for  two  men 
may  help  each  other  to  do  things  that  one  man  could 
never  do. 

Another  immigrant  comes,  and,  guided  by  the  same 
attraction,  settles  where  there  are  already  two.  Another, 
and  another,  until  around  our  first  comer  there  are  a 


Chap.n.  INOBEASE  OP  POPULATION.  235 

score  of  neighbors.  Labor  has  now  an  effectiveness 
which,  in  the  solitary  state,  it  could  not  approach.  If 
heavy  work  is  to  be  done,  the  settlers  have  a  log-rolling, 
and  together  accomplish  in  a  day  what  singly  would  re- 
quire years.  When  one  kills  a  bullock,  the  others  take 
part  of  it,  returning  when  they  kill,  and  thus  they  have 
fresh  meat  all  the  time.  Together  they  hire  a  school- 
master, and  the  children  of  each  are  taught  for  a  frac- 
tional part  of  what  similar  teaching  would  have  cost  the 
first  settler.  It  becomes  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to 
send  to  the  nearest  town,  for  some  one  is  always  going. 
But  there  is  less  need  for  such  Journeys.  A  blacksmith 
and  a  wheelwright  soon  set  up  shops,  and  our  settler  can 
have  his  tools  repaired  for  a  small  part  of  the  labor  it 
formerly  cost  him.  A  store  is  opened  and  he  can  get 
what  he  wants  as  he  wants  it;  a  post-ofiBce,  soon  added, 
gives  him  regular  communication  with  the  rest  of  the 
world.  Then  come  a  cobbler,  a  carpenter,  a  harness- 
maker,  a  doctor;  and  a  little  church  soon  arises.  Satis- 
factions become  possible  that  in  the  solitary  state  were 
impossible.  There  are  gratifications  for  the  social  and 
the  intellectual  nature — for  that  part  of  the  man  that 
rises  above  the  animal.  The  power  of  sympathy,  the 
sense  of  companionship,  the  emulation  of  comparison  and 
contrast,  open  a  wider,  and  fuller,  and  more  varied  life. 
In  rejoicing,  there  are  others  to  rejoice;  in  sorrow,  the 
mourners  do  not  mourn  alone.  There  are  husking  bees, 
and  apple  parings,  and  quilting  parties.  Though  the 
ballroom  be  unplastered  and  the  orchestra  but  a  fiddle, 
the  notes  of  the  magician  are  yet  in  the  strain,  and 
Cupid  dances  with  the  dancers.  At  the  wedding,  there 
are  others  to  admire  and  enjoy;  in  the  house  of  death, 
there  are  watchers;  by  the  open  grave,  stands  human 
sympathy  to  sustain  the  mourners.  Occasionally,  comes 
a  straggling  lecturer  to  open  up  glimpses  of  the  world 
of  science,  of  literature,   or  of  art;  in  election  times. 


936  BPFECTS  OP  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IT. 

come  stump  speakers,  and  the  citizen  rises  to  a  sense  of 
dignity  and  power,  as  the  cause  of  empires  is  tried  before 
him  in  the  struggle  of  John  Doe  and  Richard  Eoe  for  his 
support  and  vote.  And,  by  and  by,  comes  the  circus, 
talked  of  months  before,  and  opening  to  children  whose 
horizon  has  been  the  prairie,  all  the  realms  of  the  imag' 
ination — princes  and  princesses  of  fairy  tale,  mail-clad 
crusaders  and  turbaned  Moors,  Cinderella's  fairy  coach, 
and  the  giants  of  nursery  lore;  lions  such  as  crouched 
before  Daniel,  or  in  circling  Eoman  amphitheater  tore 
the  saints  of  God;  ostriches  who  recall  the  sandy  deserts; 
camels  such  as  stood  around  when  the  wicked  brethren 
raised  Joseph  from  the  well  and  sold  him  into  bondage; 
elephants  such  as  crossed  the  Alps  with  Hannibal,  or  felt 
the  sword  of  the  Maccabees;  and  glorious  music  that 
thrills  and  builds  in  the  chambers  of  the  mind  as  rose 
the  sunny  dome  of  Kubla  Khan. 

Go  to  our  settler  now,  and  say  to  him:  "You  have  so 
many  fruit  trees  which  you  planted;  so  much  fencing, 
such  a  well,  a  barn,  a  house — in  short,  you  have  by  your 
labor  added  so  much  value  to  this  farm.  Your  land 
itself  is  not  quite  so  good.  You  have  been  cropping  it, 
and  by  and  by  it  will  need  manure.  I  will  give  you  the 
full  value  of  all  your  improvements  if  you  will  give  it  to 
me,  and  go  again  with  your  family  beyond  the  verge  of 
settlement.'*  He  would  laugh  at  you.  His  land  yields 
no  more  wheat  or  potatoes  than  before,  but  it  does  yield 
far  more  of  all  the  necessaries  and  comforts  of  life.  His 
labor  upon  it  will  bring  no  heavier  crops,  and,  we  will 
suppose,  no  more  valuable  .  crops,  but  it  will  bring  far 
more  of  all  the  other  things  for  which  men  work.  The 
presence  of  other  settlers — the  increase  of  population — 
has  added  to  the  productiveness,  in  these  things,  of  labor 
bestowed  upon  it,  and  this  added  productiveness  gives  it 
a  superiority  over  land  of  equal  natural  quality  whe^e 
there  are  as  yet  no  settlers.     If  no  land  remains  to  be 


Chap.n.  INCREASE  OF  POPULATION.  337 

taken  up,  except  such  as  is  as  far  removed  from  popula- 
tion as  was  our  settler's  land  when  he  first  went  upon  it, 
the  value  or  rent  of  this  land  will  be  measured  by  the 
whole  of  this  added  capability.  If,  however,  as  we  have 
supposed,  there  is  a  continuous  stretch  of  equal  land,  over 
which  population  is  now  spreading,  it  will  not  be  neces- 
sary for  the  new  settler  to  go  into  the  wilderness,  as  did 
the  first.  He  will  settle  just  beyond  the  other  settlers, 
and  will  get  the  advantage  of  proximity  to  them.  The 
value  or  rent  of  our  settler's  land  will  thus  depend  on  the 
advantage  which  it  has,  from  being  at  the  center  of 
population,  over  that  on  the  verge.  In  the  one  case,  the 
margin  of  production  will  remain  as  before;  in  the  other, 
the  margin  of  production  will  be  raised. 

Population  still  continues  to  increase,  and  as  it  in- 
creases so  do  the  economies  which  its  increase  permits, 
and  which  in  effect  add  to  the  productiveness  of  the  land. 
Our  first  settler's  land,  being  the  center  of  population, 
the  store,  the  blacksmith's  forge,  the  wheelwright's  shop, 
are  set  up  on  it,  or  on  its  margin,  where  soon  arises  a 
village,  which  rapidly  grows  into  a  town,  the  center  of 
exchanges  for  the  people  of  the  whole  district.  With  no 
greater  agricultural  productiveness  than  it  had  at  first, 
this  land  now  begins  to  develop  a  productiveness  of  a 
higher  kind.  To  labor  expended  in  raising  corn,  or 
wheat,  or  potatoes,  it  will  yield  no  more  of  those  things 
than  at  first;  but  to  labor  expended  in  the  subdivided 
branches  of  production  which  require  proximity  to  other 
producers,  and,  especially,  to  labor  expended  in  that 
final  part  of  production,  which  consists  in  distribution, 
it  will  yield  much  larger  returns.  The  wheat-grower 
may  go  further  on,  and  find  land  on  which  his  labor  will 
produce  as  much  wheat,  and  nearly  as  much  wealth;  but 
the  artisan,  the  manufacturer,  the  storekeeper,  the  pro- 
fessional man,  find  that  their  labor  expended  here,  at  the 
center  of  exchanges,  will  yield  them  much  more  than  if 


33$  EPFECT8   OF  MATERIAL  PHOaRBSS.  Book  IV. 

expended  even  at  a  little  distance  away  from  it;  and  this 
excess  of  productiveness  for  such  purposes  the  land- 
owner can  claim  just  as  he  could  an  excess  in  its  wheat- 
producing  power.  And  so  our  settler  is  able  to  sell  in 
building  lots  a  few  of  his  acres  for  prices  which  it  would 
not  bring  for  wheat-growing  if  its  fertility  had  been  mul- 
tiplied many  times.  With  the  proceeds,  he  builds  him- 
self  a  fine  house,  and  furnishes  it  handsomely.  That  is 
to  say,  to  reduce  the  transaction  to  its  lowest  terms,  the 
people  who  wish  to  use  the  land  build  and  furnish  the 
house  for  him,  on  condition  that  he  will  let  them  avail 
themselves  of  the  superior  productiveness  which  the  in- 
crease of  population  has  given  the  land. 

Population  still  keeps  on  increasing,  giving  greater 
and  greater  utility  to  the  land,  and  more  and  more  wealth 
to  its  owner.  The  town  has  grown  into  a  city — a  St. 
Louis,  a  Chicago  or  a  San  Francisco — and  still  it  grows. 
Production  is  here  carried  on  upon  a  great  scale,  with 
the  best  machinery  and  the  most  favorable  facilities;  the 
division  of  labor  becomes  extremely  minute,  wonderfully 
multiplying  efficiency;  exchanges  are  of  such  volume  and 
rapidity  that  they  are  made  with  the  minimum  of  friction 
and  loss.  Here  is  the  heart,  the  brain,  of  the  vast  social 
organism  that  has  grown  up  from  the  germ  of  the  first 
settlement;  here  has  developed  one  of  the  great  gan- 
glions of  the  human  world.  Hither  run  all  roads,  hither 
set  all  currents,  through  all  the  vast  regions  round 
about.  Here,  if  you  have  anything  to  sell,  is  the 
market;  here,  if  you  have  anything  to  buy,  is  the  largest 
and  the  choicest  stock.  Here  intellectual  activity  is 
gathered  into  a  focus,  and  here  springs  that  stimulus 
which  is  born  of  the  collision  of  mind  with  mind.  Here 
are  the  great  libraries,  the  storehouses  and  granaries  of 
knowledge,  the  learned  professors,  the  famous  special- 
ists. Here  are  museums  and  art  galleries,  collections  of 
philosophical  apparatus,  and  all  things  rare,  and  valuable. 


Ouip.n.  INOBEASE  OF  POPULATION.  239 

and  best  of  their  kind.  Here  come  great  actors,  and 
orators,  and  singers,  from  all  over  the  world.  Here,  in 
short,  is  a  center  of  human  life,  in  all  its  varied  mani- 
festations. 

So  enormous  are  the  advantages  which  this  land  now 
offers  for  the  application  of  labor  that  instead  of  one 
man  with  a  span  of  horses  scratching  over  acres,  you  may 
count  in  places  thousands  of  workers  to  the  acre,  work- 
ing tier  on  tier,  on  floors  raised  one  above  the  other,  five, 
six,  seven  and  eight  stories  from  the  ground,  while  un- 
derneath the  surface  of  the  earth  engines  are  throbbing 
with  pulsations  that  exert  the  force  of  thousands  of 
horses. 

All  these  advantages  attach  to  the  land;  it  is  on  this 
land  and  no  other  that  they  can  be  utilized,  for  here  is 
the  center  of  population — the  focus  of  exchanges,  the 
market  place  and  workshop  of  the  highest  forms  of  in- 
dustry. The  productive  powers  which  density  of  popu- 
lation has  attached  to  this  land  are  equivalent  to  the 
multiplication  of  its  original  fertility  by  the  hundred  fold 
and  the  thousand  fold.  And  rent,  which  measures  the 
difference  between  this  added  productiveness  and  that  of 
the  least  productive  land  in  use,  has  increased  accord- 
ingly. Our  settler,  or  whoever  has  succeeded  to  his 
right  to  the  land,  is  now  a  millionaire.  Like  another 
Kip  Van  Winkle,  he  may  have  lain  down  and  slept;  still 
he  is  rich — not  from  anything  he  has  done,  but  from  the 
increase  of  population.  There  are  lots  from  which  for 
every  foot  of  frontage  the  owner  may  draw  more  than  an 
average  mechanic  can  earn;  there  are  lots  that  will  sell 
for  more  than  would  suffice  to  pave  them  with  gold  coin. 
In  the  principal  streets  are  towering  buildings,  of 
granite,  marble,  iron,  and  plate  glass,  finished  in  the 
most  expensive  style,  replete  with  every  convenience. 
Yet  they  are  not  worth  as  much  as  the  land  upon  which 
they  rest — the  same  land,  in  nothing  changed,  which 
when  our  first  settler  came  uj)on  it  had  no  value  at  all. 


240  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  BooklV. 

That  this  is  the  way  in  which  the  increase  of  popula- 
tion powerfully  acts  in  increasing  rent,  whoever,  in  a 
progressive  country,  will  look  around  him,  may  see  for 
himself.  The  process  is  going  on  under  his  eyes.  The 
increasing  difference  in  the  productiveness  of  the  land  in 
use,  which  causes  an  increasing  rise  in  rent,  results  not 
80  much  from  the  necessities  of  increased  population 
compelling  the  resort  to  inferior  land,  as  from  the  in- 
creased productiveness  which  increased  population  gives 
to  the  lands  already  in  use.  The  most  valuable  lands  on 
the  globe,  the  lands  which  yield  the  highest  rent,  are  not 
lands  of  surpassing  natural  fertility,  but  lands  to  which 
a  surpassing  utility  has  been  given  by  the  increase  of 
population. 

The  increase  of  productiveness  or  utility  which  in- 
crease of  population  gives  to  certain  lands,  in  the  way  to 
which  I  have  been  calling  attention,  attaches,  as  it  were, 
to  the  mere  quality  of  extension.  The  valuable  quality 
of  land  that  has  become  a  center  of  population  is  its 
superficial  capacity — it  makes  no  difference  whether  it  is 
fertile,  alluvial  soil  like  that  of  Philadelphia;  rich  bottom 
land  like  that  of  New  Orleans;  a  filled-in  marsh  like  that 
of  St.  Petersburg,  or  a  sandy  waste  like  the  greater  part 
of  San  Francisco. 

And  where  value  seems  to  arise  from  superior  natural 
qualities,  such  as  deep  water  and  good  anchorage,  rich 
deposits  of  coal  and  iron,  or  heavy  timber,  observation 
also  shows  that  these  superior  qualities  are  brought  out, 
rendered  tangible,  by  population.  The  coal  and  iron 
fields  of  Pennsylvania,  that  to-day  are  worth  enormous 
sums,  were  fifty  years  ago  valueless.  What  is  the  eflBcient 
cause  of  the  difference?  Simply  the  difference  in  popu- 
lation. The  coal  and  iron  beds  of  Wyoming  and  Mon- 
tana, which  to-day  are  valueless,  will,  in  fifty  years  from 
now,  be  worth  millions  on  millions,  simply  because,  in 
the  meantime,  population  will  have  greatly  increased. 


Chap.n.  INCREASE  OF  POPULATIOlSr.  241 

It  is  a  well  provisioned  ship,  this  on  which  we  sail 
through  space.  If  the  bread  and  beef  above  decks  seem 
to  grow  scarce,  we  but  open  a  hatch  and  there  is  a  new 
supply,  of  which  before  we  never  dreamed.  And  very 
great  command  over  the  services  of  others  comes  to 
those  who  as  the  hatches  are  opened  are  permitted  to 
say,  "This  is  mine!'* 

To  recapitulate:  The  effect  of  increasing  population 
upon  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  to  increase  rent,  and 
consequently  to  diminish  the  proportion  of  the  produce 
which  goes  to  capital  and  labor,  in  two  ways:  First,  By 
lowering  the  margin  of  cultivation.  Second,  By  bring- 
ing out  in  land  special  capabilities  otherwise  latent,  and 
by  attaching  special  capabilities  to  particular  lands. 

I  am  disposed  to  think  that  the  latter  mode,  to  which 
little  attention  has  been  given  by  political  economists,  is 
really  the  more  important.  But  this,  in  our  inquiry,  ia 
not  a  matter  of  moment. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  EFFECT  OF    IMPEOVEMEKTS  IN  THE  ARTS  UPOS"  THE 
DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 

Eliminating  improvements  in  the  arts,  we  have  seen 
the  effects  of  increase  of  population  upon  the  distribution 
of  wealth.  Eliminating  increase  of  population,  let  us 
now  see  what  effect  improvements  in  the  arts  of  produc- 
tion have  upon  distribution. 

We  have  seen  that  increase  of  population  increases 
rent,  rather  by  increasing  the  productiveness  of  labor 
than  by  decreasing  it.  If  it  can  now  be  shown  that,  irre- 
spective of  the  increase  of  population,  the  effect  of  im- 
provements in  methods  of  production  and  exchange  is  to 
increase  rent,  the  disproof  of  the  Malthusian  theory — 
and  of  all  the  doctrines  derived  from  or  related  to  it — 
will  be  final  and  complete,  for  we  shall  have  accounted 
for  the  tendency  of  material  progress  to  lower  wages  and 
depress  the  condition  of  the  lowest  class,  without  re- 
course to  the  theory  of  increasing  pressure  against  the 
means  of  subsistence. 

That  this  is  the  case  will,  I  think,  appear  on  the 
slightest  consideration. 

The  effect  of  inventions  and  improvements  in  the  pro- 
ductive arts  is  to  save  labor — that  is,  to  enable  the  same 
result  to  be  secured  with  less  labor,  or  a  greater  result 
with  the  same  labor. 

Now,  in  a  state  of  society  in  which  the  existing  power 
of  labor  served  to  satisfy  all  material  desires,  and  there 
was  no  possibility  of  new  desires  being  called  forth  by 
the  opportunity  of  gratifying  them,  the  effect  of  labor- 


eskap.zn:  improvements  in  the  abts.  243 

saving  improvements  would  be  simply  to  reduce  the 
amount  of  labor  expended.  But  such  a  state  of  society, 
if  it  can  anywhere  be  found,  which  I  do  not  believe, 
exists  only  where  the  human  most  nearly  approaches 
the  animal.  In  the  state  of  society  called  civilized,  and 
which  in  this  inquiry  we  are  concerned  with,  the  very 
reverse  is  the  case.  Demand  is  not  a  fixed  quantity, 
that  increases  only  as  population  increases.  In  each  in- 
dividual it  rises  with  his  power  of  getting  the  things  de- 
manded. Man  is  not  an  ox,  who,  when  he  has  eaten  his 
fill,  lies  down  to  chew  the  cud;  he  is  the  daughter  of  the 
horse  leech,  who  constantly  asks  for  more.  "When  I  get 
some  money,"  said  Erasmus,  "I  will  buy  me  some  Greek 
books  and  afterward  some  clothes.'*  The  amount  of 
wealth  produced  is  nowhere  commensurate  with  the 
desire  for  wealth,  and  desire  mounts  with  every  addi- 
tional opportunity  for  gratification. 

This  being  the  case,  the  effect  of  labor-saving  improve- 
ments will  be  to  increase  the  production  of  wealth.  Now, 
for  the  production  of  wealth,  two  things  are  required — 
labor  and  land.  Therefore,  the  effect  of  labor-saving 
improvements  will  be  to  extend  the  demand  for  land, 
and  wherever  the  limit  of  the  quality  of  land  in  use  is 
reached,  to  bring  into  cultivation  lands  of  less  natural 
productiveness,  or  to  extend  cultivation  on  the  same 
lands  to  a  point  of  lower  natural  productiveness.  And 
thus,  while  the  primary  effect  of  labor-saving  improve- 
ments is  to  increase  the  power  of  labor,  the  secondary 
effect  is  to  extend  cultivation,  and,  where  this  lowers  the 
margin  of  cultivation,  to  increase  rent.  Thus,  where 
land  is  entirely  appropriated,  as  in  England,  or  where  it 
is  either  appropriated  or  is  capable  of  appropriation  as 
rapidly  as  it  is  needed  for  use,  as  in  the  United  States, 
the  I'Himate  effect  of  labor-saving  machinery  or  improve- 
ments is  to  increase  rent  without  increasing  wages  or 
interest. 


244  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IV. 

It  is  important  that  this  be  fully  understood,  for  it 
shows  that  effects  attributed  by  current  theories  to  in- 
crease of  population  are  really  due  to  the  progress  of  in- 
vention, and  explains  the  otherwise  perplexing  fact  that 
labor-saving  machinery  everywhere  fails  to  benefit 
laborers. 

Yet,  to  grasp  fully  this  truth,  it  is  necessary  to  keep 
in  mind  what  I  have  already  more  than  once  adverted  to 
— the  interchangeability  of  wealth.  I  refer  to  this  again, 
only  because  it  is  so  persistently  forgotten  or  ignored  by 
writers  who  speak  of  agricultural  production  as  though  it 
were  to  be  distinguished  from  production  in  general,  and 
of  food  or  subsistence  as  though  it  were  not  included  in 
the  term  wealth. 

Let  me  ask  the  reader  to  bear  in  mind,  what  has 
already  been  sufficiently  illustrated,  that  the  possession  or 
production  of  any  form  of  wealth  is  virtually  the  posses- 
sion or  production  of  any  other  form  of  wealth  for  which 
it  will  exchange — in  order  that  he  may  clearly  see  that  it 
is  not  merely  improvements  which  effect  a  saving  in 
labor  directly  applied  to  land  that  tend  to  increase  rent, 
but  all  improvements  that  in  any  way  save  labor. 

That  the  labor  of  any  individual  is  applied  exclusively 
to  the  production  of  one  form  of  wealth  is  solely  the 
result  of  the  division  of  labor.  The  object  of  labor  on 
the  part  of  any  individual  is  not  the  obtainment  of 
wealth  in  one  particular  form,  but  the  obtainment  of 
wealth  in  all  the  forms  that  consort  with  his  desires. 
And,  hence,  an  improvement  which  effects  a  saving  in 
the  labor  required  to  produce  one  of  the  things  desired, 
is,  in  effect,  an  increase  in  the  power  of  producing  all 
the  other  things.  If  it  take  half  a  man's  labor  to  keep 
him  in  food,  and  the  other  half  to  provide  him  clothing 
and  shelter,  an  improvement  which  would  increase  his 
power  of  producing  food  would  also  increase  his  power 
of  providing  clothing  and  shelter.     If  his  desires  for 


Chap.nL  IMPBOVEMENTS  IN  THE  ARTS.  245 

more  or  better  food,  and  for  more  or  better  clothing  and 
shelter,  were  equal,  an  improvement  in  one  department 
of  labor  would  be  precisely  equivalent  to  a  like  improve- 
ment in  the  other.  If  the  improvement  consisted  in  a 
doubling  of  the  power  of  his  labor  in  producing  food, 
he  would  give  one-third  less  labor  to  the  production  of 
food,  and  one-third  more  to  the  providing  of  clothing 
and  shelter.  If  the  improvement  doubled  his  power  to 
provide  clothing  and  shelter  he  would  give  one-third  less 
labor  to  the  production  of  these  things,  and  one-third 
more  to  the  production  of  food.  In  either  case,  the 
result  would  be  the  same — he  would  be  enabled  with  the 
same  labor  to  get  one-third  more  in  quantity  or  quality 
of  all  the  things  he  desired. 

And,  so,  where  production  is  carried  on  by  the  division 
of  labor  between  individuals,  an  increase  in  the  power  of 
producing  one  of  the  things  sought  by  production  in  the 
aggregate  adds  to  the  power  of  obtaining  others,  and 
will  increase  the  production  of  the  others,  to  an  extent 
determined  by  the  proportion  which  the  saving  of  labor 
bears  to  the  total  amount  of  labor  expended,  and  by  the 
relative  strength  of  desires.  I  am  unable  to  think  of  any 
form  of  wealth,  the  demand  for  which  would  not  be  in- 
creased by  a  saving  in  the  labor  required  to  produce  the 
others.  Hearses  and  coffins  have  been  selected  as  exam- 
ples of  things  for  which  the  demand  is  little  likely  to 
increase;  but  this  is  true  only  as  to  quantity.  That  in- 
creased power  of  supply  would  lead  to  a  demand  for 
more  expensive  hearses  and  coffins,  no  one  can  doubt 
who  has  noticed  how  strong  is  the  desire  to  show  regard 
for  the  dead  by  costly  funerals. 

Nor  is  the  demand  for  food  limited,  as  in  economic 
reasoning  is  frequently,  but  erroneously,  assumed.  Sub- 
sistence is  often  spoken  of  as  though  it  were  a  fixed 
quantity;  but  it  is  fixed  only  as  having  a  definite 
minimum.     Less  than  a  certain  amount  will  not  keep  a 


246  EFFECTS  OF  MATEEIAL  PKOGRESS.  Book  IV. 

human  being  alive,  and  less  than  a  somewhat  larger 
amount  will  not  keep  a  human  being  in  good  health. 
But,  above  this  minimum,  the  subsistence  which  a 
human  being  can  use  may  be  increased  almost  indefi- 
nitely. Adam  Smith  says,  and  Eicardo  indorses  the 
statement,  that  the  desire  for  food  is  limited  in  every 
man  by  the  narrow  capacity  of  the  human  stomach;  but 
this,  manifestly,  is  true  only  in  the  sense  that  when  a 
man's  belly  is  filled,  hunger  is  satisfied.  His  demands 
for  food  have  no  such  limit.  The  stomach  of  a  Louis 
XIV.,  a  Louis  XV.,  or  a  Louis  XVL,  could  not  hold  or 
digest  more  than  the  stomach  of  a  French  peasant  of 
equal  stature,  yet,  while  a  few  rods  of  ground  would 
supply  the  black  bread  and  herbs  which  constituted  the 
subsistence  of  the  peasant,  it  took  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  acres  to  supply  the  demands  of  the  king,  who,  besides 
his  own  wasteful  use  of  the  finest  qualities  of  food,  re- 
quired immense  supplies  for  his  servants,  horses  and 
dogs.  And  in  the  common  facts  of  daily  life,  in  the  un- 
satisfied, though  perhaps  latent,  desires  which  each  one 
has,  we  may  see  how  every  increase  in  the  power  of  pro- 
ducing any  form  of  wealth  must  result  in  an  increased 
demand  for  land  and  the  direct  products  of  land.  The 
man  who  now  uses  coarse  food,  and  lives  in  a  small  house, 
will,  as  a  rule,  if  his  income  be  increased,  use  more  costly 
food,  and  move  to  a  larger  house.  If  he  grows  richer 
and  richer  he  will  procure  horses,  servants,  gardens  and 
lawns,  his  demand  for  the  use  of  land  constantly  increas- 
ing with  his  wealth.  In  the  city  where  I  write,  is  a  man 
— but  the  type  of  men  everywhere  to  be  found — who 
used  to  boil  his  own  beans  and  fry  his  own  bacon,  but 
who,  now  that  he  has  got  rich,  maintains  a  town  house 
that  takes  up  a  whole  block  and  would  answer  for  a  first- 
class  hotel,  two  or  three  country  houses  with  extensive 
grounds,  a  large  stud  of  racers,  a  breeding  farm,  private 
track,   etc.      It    certainly  takes    at    least    a   thousand 


Chap.m.  IMPROVEMEITTS   IN   THE   ARTS.  947 

times,  it  may  be  several  thousand  times,  as  much  land 
to  supply  the  demands  of  this  man  now  as  it  did  when 
he  was  poor. 

And,  so,  every  improvement  or  invention,  no  matter 
what  it  be,  which  gives  to  labor  the  power  of  producing 
more  wealth,  causes  an  increased  demand  for  land  and 
its  direct  products,  and  thus  tends  to  force  down  the 
margin  of  cultivation,  just  as  would  the  demand  caused 
by  an  increased  population.  This  being  the  case,  every 
labor-saving  invention,  whether  it  be  a  steam  plow,  a 
telegraph,  an  improved  process  of  smelting  ores,  a  per- 
fecting printing  press,  or  a  sewing  machine,  has  a  tend- 
ency to  increase  rent. 

Or  to  state  this  truth  concisely: 

Wealth  in  all  its  forms  being  the  product  of  lalor  applied 
to  land  or  the  products  of  land,  any  increase  in  the  power 
of  labor,  the  demand  for  ivealth  being  unsatisfied,  will  be 
utilized  in  procuring  more  toealth,  and  thus  increase  the 
demand  for  land. 

To  illustrate  this  effect  of  labor-saving  machinery  and 
improvements,  let  us  suppose  a  country  where,  as  in  all 
the  countries  of  the  civilized  world,  the  land  is  in  the 
possession  of  but  a  portion  of  the  people.  Let  us  sup- 
pose a  permanent  barrier  fixed  to  further  increase  of 
population,  either  by  the  enactment  and  strict  enforce- 
ment of  an  Herodian  law,  or  from  such  a  change  in 
manners  and  morals  as  might  result  from  an  extensive 
circulation  of  Annie  Besant's  pamphlets.  Let  the  mar- 
gin of  cultivation,  or  production,  be  represented  by  20. 
Thus  land  or  other  natural  opportunities  which,  from 
the  application  of  labor  and  capital,  will  yield  a  return 
of  20,  will  just  give  the  ordinary  rate  of  wages  and  in- 
terest, without  yielding  any  rent;  while  all  lands  yielding 
to  equal  applications  of  labor  and  capital  more  than  20 


248  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGEESS.  Book  TV. 

will  yield  the  excess  as  rent.  Population  remaining 
fixed,  let  there  be  made  inventions  and  improvements 
which  will  reduce  by  one-tenth  the  expenditure  of  labor 
and  capital  necessary  to  produce  the  same  amount  of 
wealth.  Now,  either  one-tenth  of  the  labor  and  capital 
may  be  freed,  and  production  remain  the  same  as  before; 
or  the  same  amount  of  labor  and  capital  may  be  em- 
ployed, and  production  be  correspondingly  increased. 
But  the  industrial  organization,  as  in  all  civilized  coun- 
tries, is  such  that  labor  and  capital,  and  especially  labor, 
must  press  for  employment  on  any  terms — the  industrial 
organization  is  such  that  mere  laborers  are  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  demand  their  fair  share  in  the  new  adjustment, 
and  that  any  reduction  in  the  application  of  labor  to  pro- 
duction will,  at  first,  at  least,  take  the  form,  not  of  giving 
each  laborer  the  same  amount  of  produce  for  less  work, 
but  of  throwing  some  of  the  laborers  out  of  work  and 
giving  them  none  of  the  produce.  Now,  owing  to  the 
increased  eflBciency  of  labor  secured  by  the  new  improve- 
ments, as  great  a  return  can  be  secured  at  the  point  of 
natural  productiveness  represented  by  18,  as  before  at  20. 
Thus,  the  unsatisfied  desire  for  wealth,  the  competition 
of  labor  and  capital  for  employment,  would  insure  the 
extension  of  the  margin  of  production,  we  will  say  to  18, 
and  thus  rent  would  be  increased  by  the  difference  be- 
tween 18  and  20,  while  wages  and  interest,  in  quantity, 
would  be  no  more  than  before,  and,  in  proportion  to  the 
whole  produce,  would  be  less.  There  would  be  a 
greater  production  of  wealth,  but  land  owners  would  get 
the  whole  benefit,  subject  to  temporary  deductions, 
which  will  be  hereafter  stated. 

If  invention  and  improvement  still  go  on,  the  efficiency 
of  labor  will  be  still  further  increased,  and  the  amount 
of  labor  and  capital  necessary  to  produce  a  given  result 
further  diminished.  The  same  causes  will  lead  to  the 
utilization  of  this  new  gain  in  productive  power  for  the 


Chap.ni.  IMPROVEMEKTS  IN  THE  ARTS.  349 

production  of  more  wealth;  the  margin  of  cultivation 
will  be  again  extended,  and  rent  will  increase,  both  in 
proportion  and  amount,  without  any  increase  in  wages 
and  interest.  And,  so,  as  invention  and  improvement 
go  on,  constantly  adding  to  the  efficiency  of  labor,  the 
margin  of  production  will  be  pushed  lower  and  lower, 
and  rent  constantly  increased,  though  population  should 
remain  stationary. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  lowering  of  the  margin 
of  production  would  always  exactly  correspond  with  the 
increase  in  productive  power,  any  more  than  I  mean  to 
say  that  the  process  would  be  one  of  clearly  defined 
steps.  Whether,  in  any  particular  case,  the  lowering  of 
the  margin  of  production  lags  behind  or  exceeds  the  in- 
crease in  productive  power,  will  depend,  I  conceive,  upon 
what  may  be  called  the  area  of  productiveness  that  can 
be  utilized  before  cultivation  is  forced  to  the  next  lowest 
point.  For  instance,  if  the  margin  of  cultivation  be  at 
20,  improvements  which  enable  the  same  produce  to  be 
obtained  with  one-tenth  less  capital  and  labor  will  not 
carry  the  margin  to  18,  if  the  area  having  a  produc- 
tiveness of  19  is  sufficient  to  employ  all  the  labor  and 
capital  displaced  from  the  cultivation  of  the  superior 
lands.  In  this  case,  the  margin  of  cultivation  wonld 
rest  at  19,  and  rents  would  be  increased  by  the  dif- 
ference between  19  and  20,  and  wages  and  interest  by 
the  difference  between  18  and  19.  But  if,  with  the  same 
increase  in  productive  power  the  area  of  productiveness 
between  20  and  18  should  not  be  sufficient  to  employ  all 
the  displaced  labor  and  capital,  the  margin  of  cultivation 
must,  if  the  same  amount  of  labor  and  capital  press  for 
employment,  be  carried  lower  than  18.  In  this  case, 
rent  would  gain  more  than  the  increase  in  the  product, 
and  wages  and  interest  would  be  less  than  before  the  im- 
provements which  increased  productive  power. 

Hor  is  it  precisely  true  that  the  labor  set  free  by  each 


250  EFFECTS  OF  MATEEIAL  PE0GEES3.  Book  TV. 

improvement  will  all  be  driven  to  seek  employment  in 
the  production  of  more  wealth.  The  increased  power  of 
satisfaction,  which  each  fresh  improvement  gives  to  a 
certain  portion  of  the  community,  will  be  utilized  in  de- 
manding leisure  or  services,  as  well  as  in  demanding 
wealth.  Some  laborers  will,  therefore,  become  idlers 
and  some  will  pass  from  the  ranks  of  productive  to  those 
of  unproductive  laborers — the  proportion  of  which,  as 
observation  shows,  tends  to  increase  with  the  progress  of 
society. 

But,  as  I  shall  presently  refer  to  a  cause,  as  yet  uncon- 
sidered, which  constantly  tends  to  lower  the  margin  of 
cultivation,  to  steady  the  advance  of  rent,  and  even  carry 
it  beyond  the  proportion  that  would  be  fixed  by  the 
actual  margin  of  cultivation,  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
take  into  account  these  perturbations  in  the  downward 
movement  of  the  margin  of  cultivation  and  the  upward 
movement  of  rent.  All  I  wish  to  make  clear  is  that, 
without  any  increase  in  population,  the  progress  of  in- 
vention constantly  tends  to  give  a  larger  proportion  of 
the  produce  to  the  owners  of  land,  and  a  smaller  and 
smaller  proportion  to  labor  and  capital. 

And,  as  we  can  assign  no  limits  to  the  progress  of  in- 
vention, neither  can  we  assign  any  limits  to  the  increase 
of  rent,  short  of  the  whole  produce.  For,  if  labor-saving 
inventions  went  on  until  perfection  was  attained,  and 
the  necessity  of  labor  in  the  production  of  wealth  was 
entirely  done  away  with,  then  everything  that  the  earth 
could  yield  coald  be  obtained  without  labor,  and  the 
margin  of  cultivation  would  be  extended  to  zero.  "Wages 
would  be  nothing,  and  interest  would  be  nothing,  while 
rent  would  take  everything.  For  the  owners  of  the 
lamd,  being  enabled  without  labor  to  obtain  all  the  wealth 
that  could  be  procured  from  nature,  there  would  be  no 
use  for  either  labor  or  capital,  and  no  possible  way  in 
which  either  could  compel  any  share  of  the  wealth  pro- 


Chap.  in.  IMPROVEMElfTS   ITS  THE  ARTS.  251 

duced.  And  no  matter  how  small  population  might  be, 
if  anybody  but  the  land  owners  continued  to  exist,  it 
would  be  at  the  whim  or  by  the  mercy  of  the  land  owners 
— they  would  be  maintained  either  for  the  amusement 
of  the  land  owners,  or,  as  paupers,  by  their  bounty. 

This  point,  of  the  absolute  perfection  of  labor-saving 
inventions,  may  seem  very  remote,  if  not  impossible  of 
attainment;  but  it  is  a  point  toward  which  the  march  of 
invention  is  every  day  more  strongly  tending.  And  in 
the  thinning  out  of  population  in  the  agricultural  dis- 
tricts of  Great  Britain,  where  small  farms  are  being  con- 
verted into  larger  ones,  and  in  the  great  machine-worked 
wheat-fields  of  California  and  Dakota,  where  one  may 
ride  for  miles  and  miles  through  waving  grain  without 
seeing  a  human  habitation,  there  are  already  suggestions 
of  the  final  goal  toward  which  the  whole  civilized  world 
is  hastening.  The  steam  plow  and  the  reaping  machine 
are  creating  in  the  modern  world  latifundia  of  the  same 
kind  that  the  influx  of  slaves  from  foreign  wars  created 
in  ancient  Italy.  And  to  many  a  poor  fellow  as  he  is 
shoved  out  of  his  accustomed  place  and  forced  to  move 
on — as  the  Eoman  farmers  were  forced  to  join  the  pro- 
letariat of  the  great  city,  or  sell  their  blood  for  bread  in 
the  ranks  of  the  legions — it  seems  as  though  these  labor- 
saving  inventions  were  in  themselves  a  curse,  and  we 
hear  men  talking  of  work,  as  though  the  wearying  strain 
of  the  muscles  were,  in  itself,  a  thing  to  be  desired. 

In  what  has  preceded,  I  have,  of  course,  spoken  of  in- 
ventions and  improvements  when  generally  diffused.  It 
is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  as  long  as  an  invention  or 
an  improvement  is  used  by  so  few  that  they  derive  a 
special  advantage  from  it,  it  does  not,  to  the  extent  of 
this  special  advantage,  affect  the  general  distribution  of 
wealth.  So,  in  regard  to  the  limited  monopolies  created 
by  patent  laws,  or  by  the  causes  which  give  the  same 
character  to  railroad  and  telegraph  lines,  etc.     Although 


353  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IV. 

generally  mistaken  for  profits  of  capital,  the  special  prof- 
its thus  arising  are  really  the  returns  of  monopoly,  as  has 
been  explained  in  a  previous  chapter,  and,  to  the  extent 
that  they  subtract  from  the  benefits  of  an  improvement, 
do  not  primarily  affect  general  distribution.  For  in- 
stance, the  benefits  of  a  railroad  or  similar  improvement 
in  cheapening  transportation  are  diffused  or  monopolized, 
as  its  charges  are  reduced  to  a  rate  which  will  yield  ordi- 
nary interest  on  the  capital  invested,  or  kept  up  to  a 
point  which  will  yield  an  extraordinary  return,  or  cover 
the  stealing  of  the  constructors  or  directors.  And,  as  is 
well  known,  the  rise  in  rent  or  land  values  corresponds 
with  the  reduction  in  the  charges. 

As  has  before  been  said,  in  the  improvements  which 
advance  rent,  are  not  only  to  be  included  the  improve- 
ments which  directly  increase  productive  power,  but  also 
such  improvements  in  government,  manners,  and  morals 
as  indirectly  increase  it.  Considered  as  material  forces, 
the  effect  of  all  these  is  to  increase  productive  power, 
and,  like  improvements  in  the  productive  arts,  their 
benefit  is  ultimately  monopolized  by  the  possessors  of 
the  land.  A  notable  instance  of  this  is  to  be  found  in 
the  abolition  of  protection  by  England.  Free  trade  has 
enormously  increased  the  wealth  of  Great  Britain,  with- 
out lessening  pauperism.  It  has  simply  increased  rent. 
And  if  the  corrupt  governments  of  our  great  American 
cities  were  to  be  made  models  of  purity  and  economy,  the 
effect  would  simply  be  to  increase  the  value  of  land,  not 
to  raise  either  wages  or  interest. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EXPECTATION  EAISED  BY  MATEEIAL 
PROGRESS. 

We  have  now  seen  that  while  advancing  population 
tends  to  advance  rent,  so  all  the  causes  that  in  a  pro- 
gressive state  of  society  operate  to  increase  the  produc- 
tive power  of  labor  tend,  also,  to  advance  rent,  and  not 
to  advance  wages  or  interest.  The  increased  production 
of  wealth  goes  ultimately  to  the  owners  of  land  in  in- 
creased rent;  and,  although,  as  improvement  goes  on, 
advantages  may  accrue  to  individuals  not  land  holders, 
which  concentrate  in  their  hands  considerable  portions  of 
the  increased  produce,  yet  there  is  in  all  this  improve- 
ment nothing  which  tends  to  increase  the  general  return 
either  to  labor  or  to  capital. 

But  there  is  a  cause,  not  yet  adverted  to,  which  must 
be  taken  into  consideration  fully  to  explain  the  influence 
of  material  progress  upon  the  distribution  of  wealth. 

That  cause  is  the  confident  expectation  of  the  future 
enhancement  of  land  values,  which  arises  in  all  progress- 
ive countries  from  the  steady  increase  of  rent,  and  which 
leads  to  speculation,  or  the  holding  of  land  for  a  higher 
price  than  it  would  then  otherwise  bring. 

We  have  hitherto  assumed,  as  is  generally  assumed  in 
elucidations  of  the  theory  of  rent,  that  the  actual  margin 
of  cultivation  always  coincides  with  what  may  be  termed 
the  necessary  margin  of  cultivation — that  is  to  say,  we 
have  assumed  that  cultivation  extends  to  less  productive 
points  only  as  it  becomes  necessary  from  the  fact  that 
natural  opportunities  are  at  the  more  productive  points 
fully  utilized. 


254  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IV. 

This,  probably,  is  the  case  in  stationary  or  very  slowly 
progressing  communities,  but  in  rapidly  progressing 
communities,  where  the  swift  and  steady  increase  of  rent 
gives  confidence  to  calculations  of  further  increase,  it  is 
not  the  case.  In  such  communities,  the  confident  ex- 
pectation of  increased  prices  produces,  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent,  the  effects  of  a  combination  among  land 
holders,  and  tends  to  the  withholding  of  land  from  use, 
in  expectation  of  higher  prices,  thus  forcing  the  margin 
of  cultivation  farther  than  required  by  the  necessities  of 
production. 

This  cause  must  operate  to  some  extent  in  all  progress- 
ive communities,  though  in  such  countries  as  England, 
where  the  tenant  system  prevails  in  agriculture,  it  may 
be  shown  more  in  the  selling  price  of  land  than  in  the 
agricultural  margin  of  cultivation,  or  actual  rent.  But 
in  communities  like  the  United  States,  where  the  user  of 
land  generally  prefers,  if  he  can,  to  own  it,  and  where 
there  is  a  great  extent  of  land  to  overrun,  it  operates 
with  enormous  power. 

The  immense  area  over  which  the  population  of  the 
United  States  is  scattered  shows  this.  The  man  who 
sets  out  from  the  Eastern  seaboard  in  search  of  the  mar- 
gin of  cultivation,  where  he  may  obtain  land  without 
paying  rent,  must,  like  the  man  who  swam  the  river  to 
get  a  drink,  pass  for  long  distances  through  half-tilled 
farms,  and  traverse  vast  areas  of  virgin  soil,  before  he 
reaches  the  point  where  land  can  be  had  free  of  rent — 
i.e.,  by  homestead  entry  or  pre-emption.  He  (and,  with 
him,  the  margin  of  cultivation)  is  forced  so  much  farther 
than  he  otherwise  need  have  gone,  by  the  speculation 
which  is  holding  these  unused  lands  in  expectation  of  in- 
creased value  in  the  future.  And  when  he  settles,  he 
will,  in  his  turn,  take  up,  if  he  can,  more  land  than  he 
can  use,  in  the  belief  that  it  will  soon  become  valuable; 
and  so  those  who  follow  him  are  again  forced  farther  on 


Chap.  IV.  EXPECTATION  RAISED.  255 

than  the  necessities  of  production  require,  carrying  the 
margin  of  cultivation  to  still  less  productive,  because  still 
more  remote  points. 

The  same  thing  may  be  seen  in  every  rapidly  growing 
city.  If  the  land  of  superior  quality  as  to  location  were 
always  fully  used  before  land  of  inferior  quality  were 
resorted  to,  no  vacant  lots  would  be  left  as  a  city  ex- 
tended, nor  would  we  find  miserable  shanties  in  the  midst 
of  costly  buildings.  These  lots,  some  of  them  extremely 
valuable,  are  withheld  from  use,  or  from  the  full  use  to 
which  they  might  be  put,  because  their  owners,  not  being 
able  or  not  wishing  to  improve  them,  prefer,  in  expecta- 
tion of  the  advance  of  land  values,  to  hold  them  for  a 
higher  rate  than  could  now  be  obtained  from  those  will- 
ing to  improve  them.  And,  in  consequence  of  this  land 
being  withheld  from  use,  or  from  the  full  use  of  which 
it  is  capable,  the  margin  of  the  city  is  pushed  away  so 
much  farther  from  the  center. 

But  when  we  reach  the  limits  of  the  growing  city — the 
actual  margin  of  building,  which  corresponds  to  the  mar- 
gin of  cultivation  in  agriculture — we  shall  not  find  the 
land  purchasable  at  its  value  for  agricultural  purposes,  as 
it  would  be  were  rent  determined  simply  by  present  re- 
quirements; but  we  shall  find  that  for  a  long  distance 
beyond  the  city  land  bears  a  speculative  value,  based 
upon  the  belief  that  it  will  be  required  in  the  future  for 
urban  purposes,  and  that  to  reach  the  point  at  which  land 
can  be  purchased  at  a  price  not  based  upon  urban  rent, 
we  must  go  very  far  beyond  the  actual  margin  of  urban 
use. 

Or,  to  take  another  case  of  a  different  kind,  instances 
similar  to  which  may  doubtless  be  found  in  every  locality. 
There  is  in  Marin  County,  within  easy  access  of  San 
Francisco,  a  fine  belt  of  redwood  timber.  Naturally, 
this  would  be  first  used,  before  resorting  for  the  supply 
of  the  San  Francisco  market  to  timber  lands  at  a  much 


256  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Book  IK 

greater  distance.  But  it  yet  remains  uncut,  and  lumber 
procured  many  miles  beyond  is  daily  hauled  past  it  on 
the  railroad,  because  its  owner  prefers  to  hold  for  the 
greater  price  it  will  bring  in  the  future.  Thus,  by  the 
withholding  from  use  of  this  body  of  timber,  the  margin 
of  production  of  redwood  is  forced  so  much  farther  up 
and  down  the  Coast  Range.  That  mineral  land,  when 
reduced  to  private  ownership,  is  frequently  withheld 
from  use  while  poorer  deposits  are  worked,  is  well  known, 
and  in  new  States  it  is  common  to  find  individuals  who 
are  called  "land  poor" — that  is,  who  remain  poor,  some- 
times almost  to  deprivation,  because  they  insist  on  hold- 
ing land,  which  they  themselves  cannot  use,  at  prices  at 
which  no  one  else  can  profitably  use  it. 

To  recur  now  to  the  illustration  we  made  use  of  in  the 
preceding  chapter:  With  the  margin  of  cultivation 
standing  at  20,  an  increase  in  the  power  of  production 
takes  place,  which  renders  the  same  result  obtainable 
with  one-tenth  less  labor.  For  reasons  before  stated, 
the  margin  of  production  must  now  be  forced  down,  and 
if  it  rests  at  18,  the  return  to  labor  and  capital  will  be 
the  same  as  before,  when  the  margin  stood  at  20. 
Whether  it  will  be  forced  to  18  or  be  forced  lower  depends 
upon  what  I  have  called  the  area  of  productiveness  which 
intervenes  between  20  and  18.  But  if  the  confident  ex- 
pectation of  a  further  increase  of  rents  leads  the  land 
owners  to  demand  3  rent  for  20  land,  2  for  19,  and  1  for 
18  land,  and  to  withhold  their  land  from  use  until  these 
terms  are  complied  with,  the  area  of  productiveness  may 
be  so  reduced  that  the  margin  of  cultivation  must  fall  to 
17  or  even  lower;  and  thus,  as  the  result  of  the  increase 
in  the  eflSciency  of  labor,  laborers  would  get  less  than 
before,  while  interest  would  be  proportionately  reduced, 
and  rent  would  increase  in  greater  ratio  than  the  increase 
in  productive  power. 

Whether  we  formulate  it  as  an  extension  of  the  margin 


Oiap.IV.  EXPECTATION  BAI8ED.  257 

of  production,  or  as  a  carrying  of  the  rent  line  beyond 
the  margin  of  production,  the  influence  of  speculation  in 
land  in  increasing  rent  is  a  great  fact  which  cannot  be 
ignored  in  any  complete  theory  of  the  distribution  of 
wealth  in  progressive  countries.  It  is  the  force,  evolved 
by  material  progress,  which  tends  constantly  to  increase 
rent  in  a  greater  ratio  than  progress  increases  production, 
and  thus  constantly  tends,  as  material  progress  goes  on 
and  productive  power  increases,  to  reduce  wages,  not 
merely  relatively,  but  absolutely.  It  is  this  expansive 
force  which,  operating  with  great  power  in  new  coun- 
tries, brings  to  them,  seemingly  long  before  their  time, 
the  social  diseases  of  older  countries;  produces  "tramps" 
on  virgin  acres,  and  breeds  paupers  on  half-tilled  soil. 

In  short,  the  general  and  steady  advance  in  land  values 
in  a  progressive  community  necessarily  produces  that  ad- 
ditional tendency  to  advance  which  is  seen  in  the  case  of 
commodities  when  any  general  and  continuous  cause  oper- 
ates to  increase  their  price.  As,  during  the  rapid  de- 
preciation of  currency  which  marked  the  latter  days  of 
the  Southern  Confederacy,  the  fact  that  whatever  was 
bought  one  day  could  be  sold  for  a  higher  price  the  next, 
operated  to  carry  up  the  prices  of  commodities  even 
faster  than  the  depreciation  of  the  currency,  so  does  the 
steady  increase  of  land  values,  which  material  progress 
produces,  operate  still  further  to  accelerate  the  increase. 
We  see  this  secondary  cause  operating  in  full  force  in 
those  manias  of  land  speculation  which  mark  the  growth 
of  new  communities;  but  though  these  are  the  abnormal 
and  occasional  manifestations,  it  is  undeniable  that  the 
cause  steadily  operates,  with  greater  or  less  intensity,  in 
all  progressive  societies. 

The  cause  which  limits  speculation  in  commodities, 
the  tendency  of  increasing  price  to  draw  forth  additional 
supplies,  cannot  limit  the  speculative  advance  in  land 
values,  as  land  is  a  fixed  quantity,  which  human  agency 


258  EFFECTS  OF  MATERIAL  PROGRESS.  Booh  IT. 

can  neither  increase  nor  diminish;  but  there  is  neverthe- 
less a  limit  to  the  price  of  land,  in  the  minimum  required 
by  labor  and  capital  as  the  condition  of  engaging  in  pro- 
duction. If  it  were  possible  continuously  to  reduce 
wages  until  zero  were  reached,  it  would  be  possible  con- 
tinuously to  increase  rent  until  it  swallowed  up  the 
whole  produce.  But  as  wages  cannot  be  permanently 
reduced  below  the  point  at  which  laborers  will  consent 
to  work  and  reproduce,  nor  interest  below  the  point  at 
which  capital  will  be  devoted  to  production,  there  is  a 
limit  which  restrains  the  speculative  advance  of  rent. 
Hence  speculation  cannot  have  the  same  scope  to  ad- 
vance rent  in  countries  where  wages  and  interest  are 
already  near  the  minimum,  as  in  countries  where  they 
are  considerably  above  it.  Yet  that  there  is  in  all  pro- 
gressive countries  a  constant  tendency  in  the  speculative 
advance  of  rent  to  overpass  the  limit  where  production 
would  cease,  is,  I  think,  shown  by  recurring  seasons  of 
industrial  paralysis — a  matter  which  will  be  more  fully 
examined  in  the  next  book. 


BOOK  V. 

THE  PKOBLEM  SOLVED. 


CHAPTER  I. — THE  PRIMARY  CAUSE  OP  RECURRING  PAR- 
OXYSMS OF  INDUSTRIAL    DEPRESSION. 

CHAPTER  II. — ^THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  POVERTY  AMID  AD- 
VANCING WEALTH. 


To  whomsoever  the  soil  at  any  time  belongs,  to  him  belong  the 
fruits  of  it.  White  parasols,  and  elephants  mad  with  pride  are  the 
flowers  of  a  grant  of  land. — Sir  Wm.  Jones'  translation  of  an  Indian 
grant  of  land,  found  at  Tanna. 


The  widow  is  gathering  nettles  for  her  children's  dinner;  a  per- 
fumed seigneur,  delicately  lounging  in  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf,  hath  an 
alchemy  whereby  he  will  extract  from  her  the  third  nettle,  and  call 
it  rent. — Ca/rlyle. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  PRIMARY   CAUSE   OF  RECURRING     PAROXYSMS  OP 
INDUSTRIAL   DEPRESSION. 

Our  long  inquiry  is  ended.  We  may  now  marshal  the 
results. 

To  begin  with  the  industrial  depressions,  to  account 
for  which  so  many  contradictory  and  self-contradictory 
theories  are  broached. 

A  consideration  of  the  manner  in  which  the  specula- 
tive advance  in  land  values  cuts  down  the  earnings  of 
labor  and  capital  and  checks  production  leads,  I  think, 
irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  this  is  the  main  cause 
of  those  periodical  industrial  depressions  to  which  every 
civilized  country,  and  all  civilized  countries  together, 
seem  increasingly  liable. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  are  not  other  proxi- 
mate causes.  The  growing  complexity  and  interdepend- 
ence of  the  machinery  of  production,  which  makes  each 
shock  or  stoppage  propagate  itself  through  a  widening 
circle;  the  essential  defect  of  currencies  which  contract 
when  most  needed,  and  the  tremendous  alternations  in 
volume  that  occur  in  the  simpler  forms  of  commercial 
credit,  which,  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  currency  in 
any  form,  constitute  the  medium  or  flux  of  exchanges; 
the  protective  tariffs  which  present  artificial  barriers  to 
the  interplay  of  productive  forces,  and  other  similar 
causes,  undoubtedly  bear  important  part  in  producing 
and  continuing  what  are  called  hard  times.  But,  both 
from  the  consideration  of  principles  and  the  observation 
of  phenomena^  it  is  clear  that  the  great  initiatory  cause 


262  THE  PROBLEM   SOLVED.  Book  V. 

is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  speculative  advance  of  land 
values. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  shown  that  the  specu- 
lative advance  in  land  values  tends  to  press  the  margin  of 
cultivation,  or  production,  beyond  its  normal  limit,  thus 
compelling  labor  and  capital  to  accept  of  a  smaller  re- 
turn, or  (and  this  is  the  only  way  they  can  resist  the 
tendency)  to  cease  production.  Now,  it  is  not  only 
natural  that  labor  and  capital  should  resist  the  crowding 
down  of  wages  and  interest  by  the  speculative  advance  of 
rent,  but  they  are  driven  to  this  in  self-defense,  inasmuch 
as  there  is  a  minimum  of  return  below  which  labor  can- 
not exist  nor  capital  be  maintained.  Hence,  from  the 
fact  of  speculation  in  land,  we  may  infer  all  the  phe- 
nomena which  mark  these  recurring  seasons  of  industrial 
depression. 

Given  a  progressive  community,  in  which  population  is 
increasing  and  one  improvement  succeeds  another,  and 
land  must  constantly  increase  in  value.  This  steady  in- 
crease naturally  leads  to  speculation  in  which  future  in- 
crease is  anticipated,  and  land  values  are  carried  beyond 
the  point  at  which,  under  the  existing  conditions  of 
production,  their  accUstomed  returns  would  be  left  to 
labor  and  capital.  Production,  therefore,  begins  to  stop. 
Not  that  there  is  necessarily,  or  even  probably,  an  abso- 
lute diminution  in  production;  but  that  there  is  what  in 
a  progressive  community  would  be  equivalent  to  an  abso- 
lute diminution  of  production  in  a  stationary  community 
— a  failure  in  production  to  increase  proportionately, 
owing  to  the  failure  of  new  increments  of  labor  and 
capital  to  find  employment  at  the  accustomed  rates. 

This  stoppage  of  production  at  some  points  must  nec- 
essarily show  itself  at  other  points  of  the  industrial  net- 
work, in  a  cessation  of  demand,  which  would  again  check 
production  there,  and  thus  the  paralysis  would  communi- 
cate itself  through  all  the  interlacings  of  industry  and 


Chap.l.  CAUSE   OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSIOIT.  263 

commerce,  producing  everywhere  a  partial  disjointing  of 
production  and  exchange,  and  resulting  in  the  phe- 
nomena that  seem  to  show  overproduction  or  over- 
consumption,  according  to  the  standpoint  from  which 
they  are  viewed. 

The  period  of  depression  thus  ensuing  would  continue 
until  (1)  the  speculative  advance  in  rents  had  been  lost; 
or  (2)  the  increase  in  the  efficiency  of  labor,  owing  to  the 
growth  of  population  and  the  progress  of  improvement, 
had  enabled  the  normal  rent  line  to  overtake  the  specu- 
lative rent  line;  or  (3)  labor  and  capital  had  become 
reconciled  to  engaging  in  production  for  smaller  returns. 
Or,  most  probably,  all  three  of  these  causes  would  co- 
operate to  produce  a  new  equilibrium,  at  which  all  the 
forces  of  production  would  again  engage,  and  a  season  of 
activity  ensue;  whereupon  rent  would  begin  to  advance 
again,  a  speculative  advance  again  take  place,  production 
again  be  checked,  and  the  same  round  be  gone  over. 

In  the  elaborate  and  complicated  system  of  production 
which  is  characteristic  of  modern  civilization,  where, 
moreover,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  distinct  and  inde- 
pendent industrial  community,  but  geographically  or 
politically  separated  communities  blend  and  interlace 
their  industrial  organizations  in  different  modes  and 
varying  measures,  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  effect 
should  be  seen  to  follow  cause  as  clearly  and  definitely  as 
would  be  the  case  in  a  simpler  development  of  industry, 
and  in  a  community  forming  a  complete  and  distinct  in- 
dustrial whole;  but,  nevertheless,  the  phenomena  actu- 
ally presented  by  these  alternate  seasons  of  activity  and 
depression  clearly  correspond  with  those  we  have  inferred 
from  the  speculative  advance  of  rent. 

Deduction  thus  shows  the  actual  phenomena  as  result- 
ing from  the  principle.  If  we  reverse  the  process,  it  is 
as  easy  by  induction  to  reach  the  principle  by  tracing  up 
the  phenomena. 


26^  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

These  seasons  of  depression  are  always  preceded  by 
seasons  of  activity  and  speculation,  and  on  all  hands  the 
connection  between  the  two  is  admitted — the  depression 
being  looked  upon  as  the  reaction  from  the  speculation, 
as  the  headache  of  the  morning  is  the  reaction  from  the 
debauch  of  the  night.  But  as  to  the  manner  in  which 
the  depression  results  from  the  speculation,  there  are  two 
classes  or  schools  of  opinion,  as  the  attempts  made  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  to  account  for  the  present  in- 
dustrial depression  will  show. 

One  school  says  that  the  speculation  produced  the  de- 
pression by  causing  overproduction,  and  point  to  the 
warehouses  filled  with  goods  that  cannot  be  sold  at 
remunerative  prices,  to  mills  closed  or  working  on  half 
time,  to  mines  shut  down  and  steamers  laid  up,  to  money 
lying  idly  in  bank  vaults,  and  workmen  compelled  to 
idleness  and  privation.  They  point  to  these  facts  as 
showing  that  the  production  has  exceeded  the  demand 
for  consumption,  and  they  point,  moreover,  to  the  fact 
that  when  government  during  war  enters  the  field  as  an 
enormous  consumer,  brisk  times  prevail,  as  in  the  United 
States  during  the  civil  war  and  in  England  during  the 
Napoleonic  struggle. 

The  other  school  says  that  the  speculation  has  pro- 
duced the  depression  by  leading  to  overconsumption, 
and  point  to  full  warehouses,  rusting  steamers,  closed 
mills,  and  idle  workmen  as  evidences  of  a  cessation  of 
effective  demand,  which,  they  say,  evidently  results  from 
the  fact  that  people,  made  extravagant  by  a  fictitious 
prosperity,  have  lived  beyond  their  means,  and  are  now 
obliged  to  retrench — that  is,  to  consume  less  wealth. 
They  point,  moreover,  to  the  enormous  consumption  of 
wealth  by  wars,  by  the  building  of  unremunerative  rail- 
roads, by  loans  to  bankrupt  governments,  etc.,  as  extrav- 
agances which,  though  not  felt  at  the  time,  just  as  the 
spendthrift  does  not  at  the  moment  feel  the  impairment 


C9iap. /.  CAUSE   OF  INDUSTRIAL   DEPRESSION.  265 

of  his  fortune,  must  now  be  made  up  by  a  season  of 
reduced  consumption. 

Now,  eacli  of  these  theories  evidently  expresses  one 
side  or  phase  of  a  general  truth,  but  each  of  them  evi- 
dently fails  to  comprehend  the  full  truth.  As  an  ex- 
planation of  the  phenomena,  each  is  equally  and  utterly 
preposterous. 

For  while  the  great  masses  of  men  want  more  wealth 
than  they  can  get,  and  while  they  are  willing  to  give  for 
it  that  which  is  the  basis  and  raw  material  of  wealth — 
their  labor — how  can  there  be  overproduction?  And 
while  the  machinery  of  production  wastes  and  producers 
are  condemned  to  unwilling  idleness,  how  can  there  be 
overconsumption  ? 

When,  with  the  desire  to  consume  more,  there  co-exist 
the  ability  and  willingness  to  produce  more,  industrial 
and  commercial  paralysis  cannot  be  charged  either  to 
overproduction  or  to  overconsumption.  Manifestly, 
the  trouble  is  that  production  and  consumption  cannot 
meet  and  satisfy  each  other. 

How  does  this  inability  arise?  It  is  evidently  and  by 
common  consent  the  result  of  speculation.  But  of  specu- 
lation in  what? 

Certainly  not  of  speculation  in  things  which  are  the 
products  of  labor — in  agricultural  or  mineral  productions, 
or  manufactured  goods,  for  the  effect  of  speculation  in 
sucb  things,  as  is  well  shown  in  current  treatises  that 
spare  me  the  necessity  of  illustration,  is  simply  to  equal- 
ize sapply  and  demand,  and  to  steady  the  interplay  of 
production  and  consumption  by  an  action  analogous  to 
that  of  a  fly-wheel  in  a  machine. 

Therefore,  if  speculation  be  the  cause  of  these  indus- 
trial depressions,  it  must  be  speculation  in  things  not  the 
production  of  labor,  but  yet  necessary  to  the  exertion  of 
labor  in  the  production  of  wealth — of  things  of  fixed 
quantity;  that  is  to  say,  it  must  be  speculation  in  land. 


THB  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

That  land  speculation  is  the  true  cause  of  indnstrial 
depression  is,  in  the  United  States,  clearly  evident.  In 
each  period  of  industrial  activity  land  values  have  stead- 
ily risen,  culminating  in  speculation  which  carried  them 
up  in  great  jumps.  This  has  been  invariably  followed  by 
a  partial  cessation  of  production,  and  its  correlative,  a 
cessation  of  effective  demand  (dull  trade),  generally 
accompanied  by  a  commercial  crash;  and  then  has  suc- 
ceeded a  period  of  comparative  stagnation,  during  which 
the  equilibrium  has  been  again  slowly  established,  and 
the  same  round  been  run  again.  This  relation  is 
observable  throughout  the  civilized  world.  Periods  of 
industrial  activity  always  culminate  in  a  speculative 
advance  of  land  values,  followed  by  symptoms  of  checked 
production,  generally  shown  at  first  by  cessation  of  de- 
mand from  the  newer  countries,  where  the  advance  in 
land  values  has  been  greatest. 

That  this  must  be  the  main  explanation  of  these 
periods  of  depression,  will  be  seen  by  an  analysis  of  the 
facts. 

All  trade,  let  it  be  remembered,  is  the  exchange  of 
commodities  for  commodities,  and  hence  the  cessation 
of  demand  for  some  commodities,  which  marks  the  de- 
pression of  trade,  is  really  a  cessation  in  the  supply  of 
other  commodities.  That  dealers  find  their  sales  declin- 
ing and  manufacturers  find  orders  falling  off,  while  the 
things  which  they  have  to  sell,  or  stand  ready  to  make, 
are  things  for  which  there  is  yet  a  widespread  desire, 
simply  shows  that  the  supply  of  other  things,  which  in 
the  course  of  trade  would  be  given  for  them,  has  de- 
clined. In  common  parlance  we  say  that  "buyers  have 
no  money,"  or  that  "money  is  becoming  scarce,"  but  in 
talking  in  this  way  we  ignore  the  fact  that  money  is  but 
the  medium  of  exchange.  "What  the  would-be  buyers 
really  lack  is  not  money,  but  commodities  which  they 
can  turn  into  money — what  is  really  becoming  scarcer,  is 


Ohap.l.  CAUSE  OF  IlfDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSION.  267 

produce  of  some  sort.  The  diminution  of  the  effective 
demand  of  consumers  is  therefore  but  a  result  of  the 
diminution  of  production. 

This  is  seen  very  clearly  by  storekeepers  in  a  manu- 
facturing town  when  the  mills  are  shut  down  and  opera- 
tives thrown  out  of  work.  It  is  the  cessation  of  produc- 
tion which  deprives  the  operatives  of  means  to  make  the 
purchases  they  desire,  and  thus  leaves  the  storekeeper 
with  what,  in  vi6w  of  the  lessened  demand,  is  a  super- 
abundant stock,  and  forces  him  to  discharge  some  of  his 
clerks  and  otherwise  reduce  his  demands.  And  the  ces- 
sation of  demand  (I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of  general 
cases  and  not  of  any  alteration  in  relative  demand  from 
such  causes  as  change  of  fashion),  which  has  left  the 
manufacturer  with  superabundant  stock  and  compelled 
him  to  discharge  his  hands,  must  arise  in  the  same  way. 
Somewhere,  it  may  be  at  the  other  end  of  the  world,  a 
check  in  production  has  produced  a  check  in  the  demand 
for  consumption.  That  demand  is  lessened  without  want 
being  satisfied,  shows  that  production  is  somewhere 
checked. 

People  want  the  things  the  manufacturer  makes  as 
much  as  ever,  just  as  the  operatives  want  the  things  the 
storekeeper  has  to  sell.  But  they  do  not  have  as  much 
to  give  for  them.  Production  has  somewhere  been 
checked,  and  this  reduction  in  the  supply  of  some  things 
has  shown  itself  in  cessation  of  demand  for  others,  the 
check  propagating  itself  through  the  whole  framework 
of  industry  and  exchange.  Now,  the  industrial  pyramid 
manifestly  rests  on  the  land.  The  primary  and  funda- 
mental occupations,  which  create  a  demand  for  all 
others,  are  evidently  those  which  extract  wealth  from 
nature,  and,  hence,  if  we  trace  from  one  exchange  point 
to  another,  and  from  one  occupation  to  another,  this 
check  to  production,  which  shows  itself  in  decreased 
purchasing  power,  we  must  ultimately  find  it  in  some 


268^  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Booh  V. 

obstacle  which  checks  labor  in  expending  itself  on  land. 
And  that  obstacle,  it  is  clear,  is  the  speculative  advance 
in  rent,  or  the  value  of  land,  which  produces  the  same 
effects,  as  in  fact,  it  is,  a  lock-out  of  labor  and  capital  by 
land  owners.  This  check  to  production,  beginning  at 
the  basis  of  interlaced  industry,  propagates  itself  from 
exchange  point  to  exchange  point,  cessation  of  supply 
becoming  failure  of  demand,  until,  so  to  speak,  the 
whole  machine  is  thrown  out  of  gear,  and  the  spectacle 
is  everywhere  presented  of  labor  going  to  waste  while 
laborers  suffer  from  want. 

This  strange  and  unnatural  spectacle  of  large  numbers 
of  willing  men  who  cannot  find  employment  is  enough 
to  suggest  the  true  cause  to  whomsoever  can  think  con- 
secutively. For,  though  custom  has  dulled  us  to  it,  it  is 
a  strange  and  unnatural  thing  that  men  who  wish  to  labor, 
in  order  to  satisfy  their  wants,  cannot  find  the  oppor- 
tunity— as,  since  labor  is  that  which  produces  wealth,  the 
man  who  seeks  to  exchange  labor  for  food,  clothing,  or 
any  other  form  of  wealth,  is  like  one  who  proposes  to 
give  bullion  for  coin,  or  wheat  for  flour.  We  talk  about 
the  supply  of  labor  and  the  demand  for  labor,  but,  evi- 
dently, these  are  only  relative  terms.  The  supply  of 
labor  is  everywhere  the  same — two  hands  always  come 
into  the  world  with  one  mouth,  twenty-one  boys  to  every 
twenty  girls;  and  the  demand  for  labor  must  always 
exist  as  long  as  men  want  things  which  labor  alone  can 
procure.  We  talk  about  the  "want  of  work,"  but,  evi- 
dently, it  is  not  work  that  is  short  while  want  continues; 
evidently,  the  supply  of  labor  cannot  be  too  great,  nor 
the  demand  for  labor  too  small,  when  people  suffer  for 
the  lack  of  things  that  labor  produces.  The  real  trouble 
must  be  that  supply  is  somehow  prevented  from  satisfy- 
ing demand,  that  somewhere  there  is  an  obstacle  which 
prevents  labor  from  producing  the  things  that  laborers 
want. 


Chap.  I.  CAUSE  OP  INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSION.  269 

Take  the  case  of  any  one  of  these  vast  masses  of  un- 
employed men,  to  whom,  though  he  never  heard  of  Mal- 
thus,  it  to-day  seems  that  there  are  too  many  people  in 
the  world.  In  his  own  wants,  in  the  needs  of  his  anxious 
wife,  in  the  demands  of  his  half-cared-for,  perhaps  even 
hungry  and  shivering  children,  there  is  demand  enough 
for  labor.  Heaven  knows!  In  his  own  willing  hands  is 
the  supply.  Put  him  on  a  solitary  island,  and  though  cut 
off  from  all  the  enormous  advantages  which  the  co- 
operation, combination,  and  machinery  of  a  civilized 
community  give  to  the  productive  powers  of  man,  yet  his 
two  hands  can  fill  the  mouths  and  keep  warm  the  backs 
that  depend  upon  them.  Yet  where  productive  power  is 
as  its  highest  development  they  cannot.  Why?  Is  it 
not  because  in  the  one  case  he  has  access  to  the  material 
and  forces  of  nature,  and  in  the  other  this  access  is 
denied? 

Is  it  not  the  fact  that  labor  is  thus  shut  off  from 
nature  which  can  alone  explain  the  state  of  things  that 
compels  men  to  stand  idle  who  would  willingly  supply 
their  wants  by  their  labor?  The  proximate  cause  of  en- 
forced idleness  with  one  set  of  men  may  be  the  cessation 
of  demand  on  the  part  of  other  men  for  the  particular 
things  they  produce,  but  trace  this  cause  from  point  to 
point,  from  occupation  to  occupation,  and  you  will  find 
that  enforced  idleness  in  one  trade  is  caused  by  enforced 
idleness  in  another,  and  that  the  paralysis  which  pro- 
duces dallness  in  all  trades  cannot  be  said  to  spring  from 
too  great  a  supply  of  labor  or  too  small  a  demand  for 
labor,  but  must  proceed  from  the  fact  that  supply  cannot 
meet  demand  by  producing  the  things  which  satisfy  want 
and  are  the  object  of  labor. 

Now,  what  is  necessary  to  enable  labor  to  produce 
these  things,  is  land.  When  we  speak  of  labor  creating 
wealth,  we  speak  metaphorically.  Man  creates  nothing. 
The  whole  human  race,  were  they  to  labor  forever,  could 


270  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  *oofc  V. 

not  create  the  tiniest  mote  that  floats  in  a  sunbeam — 
could  not  make  this  rolling  sphere  one  atom  heavier  or 
one  atom  lighter.  In  producing  wealth,  labor,  with  the 
aid  of  natural  forces,  but  works  up,  into  the  forms  de- 
sired, pre-existing  matter,  and,  to  produce  wealth,  must, 
therefore,  have  access  to  this  matter  and  to  these  forces 
— that  is  to  say,  to  land.  The  land  is  the  source  of  all 
wealth.  It  is  the  mine  from  which  must  be  drawn  the 
ore  that  labor  fashions.  It  is  the  substance  to  which 
labor  gives  the  form.  And,  hence,  when  labor  cannot 
satisfy  its  wants,  may  we  not  with  certainty  infer  that  it 
can  be  from  no  other  cause  than  that  labor  is  denied 
access  to  land? 

When  in  all  trades  there  is  what  we  call  scarcity 
of  employment;  when,  everywhere,  labor  wastes,  while 
desire  is  unsatisfied,  must  not  the  obstacle  which  pre- 
vents labor  from  producing  the  wealth  it  needs,  lie  at 
the  foundation  of  the  industrial  structure?  That  foun- 
dation is  land.  Milliners,  optical  instrument  makers, 
gilders,  and  polishers,  are  not  the  pioneers  of  new  settle- 
ments. Miners  did  not  go  to  California  or  Australia  be- 
cause shoemakers,  tailors,  machinists,  and  printers  were 
there.  But  those  trades  followed  the  miners,  just  as 
they  are  now  following  the  gold  diggers  into  the  Black 
Hills  and  the  diamond  diggers  into  South  Africa.  It  is 
not  the  storekeeper  who  is  the  cause  of  the  farmer,  but 
the  farmer  who  brings  the  storekeeper.  It  is  not  the 
growth  of  the  city  that  develops  the  country,  but  the 
development  of  the  country  that  makes  the  city  grow. 
And,  hence,  when,  through  all  trades,  men  willing  to 
work  cannot  find  opportunity  to  do  so,  the  difficulty 
must  arise  in  the  employment  that  creates  a  demand  for 
all  other  employments — it  must  be  because  labor  is  shut 
out  from  land. 

In  Leeds  or  Lowell,  in  Philadelphia  or  Manchester,  in 
London  or  New  York,  it  may  require  a  grasp  of  first 


aiap.I.  CAUSE  OF  INDUSTEIAL  DEPKESSION.  271 

principles  to  see  this;  but  where  industrial  development 
has  not  become  so  elaborate,  nor  the  extreme  links  of  the 
chain  so  widely  separated,  one  has  but  to  look  at  obvious 
facts.  Although  not  yet  thirty  years  old,  the  city  of  San 
Francisco,  both  in  population  and  in  commercial  impor- 
tance, ranks  among  the  great  cities  of  the  world,  and, 
next  to  New  York,  is  the  most  metropolitan  of  American 
cities.  Though  not  yet  thirty  years  old,  she  has  had  for 
some  years  an  increasing  number  of  unemployed  men. 
Clearly,  here,  it  is  because  men  cannot  find  employment 
in  the  country  that  there  are  so  many  unemployed  in  the 
city;  for  when  the  harvest  opens  they  go  trooping  out, 
and  when  it  is  over  they  come  trooping  back  to  the  city 
again.  If  these  now  unemployed  men  were  producing 
wealth  from  the  land,  they  would  not  only  be  employing 
themselves,  but  would  be  employing  all  the  mechanics  of 
the  city,  giving  custom  to  the  storekeepers,  trade  to  the 
merchants,  audiences  to  the  theaters,  and  subscribers 
and  advertisements  to  the  newspapers — creating  effective 
demand  that  would  be  felt  in  New  England  and  Old 
England,  and  wherever  throughout  the  world  come  the 
articles  that,  when  they  have  the  means  to  pay  for  them, 
such  a  population  consumes. 

Now,  why  is  it  that  this  unemployed  labor  cannot 
employ  itself  upon  the  land?  Not  that  the  land  is  all  in 
use.  Though  all  the  symptoms  that  in  older  countries 
are  taken  as  showing  a  redundancy  of  population  are  be- 
ginning to  manifest  themselves  in  San  Francisco,  it  is 
idle  to  talk  of  redundancy  of  population  in  a  State  that 
with  greater  natural  resources  than  France  has  not  yet  a 
million  of  people.  "Within  a  few  miles  of  San  Francisco 
is  unused  land  enough  to  give  employment  to  every  man 
who  wants  it.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  every  unem- 
ployed man  could  turn  farmer  or  build  himself  a  house, 
if  he  had  the  land;  but  that  enough  could  and  would  do 


273  THE  PKOBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  F. 

80  to  give  employment  to  the  rest.  What  is  it,  then, 
that  prevents  labor  from  employing  itself  on  this  land? 
Simply,  that  it  has  been  monopolized  and  is  held  at 
speculative  prices,  based  not  upon  present  value,  but 
upon  the  added  value  that  will  come  with  the  future 
growth  of  population. 

What  may  thus  be  seen  in  San  Francisco  by  whoever  is 
willing  to  see,  may,  I  doubt  not,  be  seen  as  clearly  in 
other  places. 

The  present  commercial  and  industrial  depression, 
which  first  clearly  manifested  itself  in  the  United  States 
in  1872,  and  has  spread  with  greater  or  less  intensity  over 
the  civilized  world,  is  largely  attributed  to  the  undue  ex- 
tension of  the  railroad  system,  with  which  there  are  many 
things  that  seem  to  show  its  relation.  I  am  fully  conscious 
that  the  construction  of  railroads  before  they  are  actually 
needed  may  divert  capital  and  labor  from  more  to  less 
productive  employments,  and  make  a  community  poorer 
instead  of  richer;  and  when  the  railroad  mania  was  at  its 
highest,  I  pointed  this  out  in  a  political  tract  addressed 
to  the  people  of  California;*  but  to  assign  to  this  wasting 
of  capital  such  a  widespread  industrial  dead-lock  seems 
to  me  like  attributing  an  unusually  low  tide  to  the  draw- 
ing of  a  few  extra  bucketfuls  of  water.  The  waste  of 
capital  and  labor  during  the  civil  war  was  enormously 
greater  than  it  could  possibly  be  by  the  construction  of 
unnecessary  railroads,  but  without  producing  any  such 
result.  And,  certainly,  there  seems  to  be  little  sense  in 
talking  of  the  waste  of  capital  and  labor  in  railroads  as 
causing  this  depression,  when  the  prominent  feature  of 
the  depression  has  been  the  superabundance  of  capital 
and  labor  seeking  employment. 

Yet,  that  there  is  a  connection  between  the  rapid  con- 

*Tlxe  Subsidy  Question  and  the  Democratic  Party,  1871. 


Chap.  I.  CAUSE  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSION.  273 

struction  of  railroads  and  industrial  depression,  any  one 
who  understands  what  increased  land  values  mean,  and 
who  has  noticed  the  effect  which  the  construction  of 
railroads  has  upon  land  speculation,  can  easily  see. 
Wherever  a  railroad  was  built  or  projected,  lands  sprang 
up  in  value  under  the  influence  of  speculation,  and  thou- 
sands of  millions  of  dollars  were  added  to  the  nominal 
values  which  capital  and  labor  were  asked  to  pay  out- 
right, or  to  pay  in  installments,  as  the  price  of  being 
allowed  to  go  to  work  and  produce  wealth.  The  in- 
evitable result  was  to  check  production,  and  this  check 
to  production  propagated  itself  in  a  cessation  of  demand, 
which  checked  production  to  the  furthest  verge  of  the 
wide  circle  of  exchanges,  operating  with  accumulated 
force  in  the  centers  of  the  great  industrial  commonwealth 
into  which  commerce  links  the  civilized  world. 

The  primary  operations  of  this  cause  can,  perhaps,  be 
nowhere  more  clearly  traced  than  in  California,  which, 
from  its  comparative  isolation,  has  constituted  a  pecul- 
iarly well-defined  community. 

Until  almost  its  close,  the  last  decade  was  marked  in 
California  by  the  same  industrial  activity  which  was 
shown  in  the  Northern  States,  and,  in  fact,  throughout 
the  civilized  world,  when  the  interruption  of  exchanges 
and  the  disarrangement  of  industry  caused  by  the  war 
and  the  blockade  of  Southern  ports  is  considered.  This 
activity  could  not  be  attributed  to  inflation  of  the  cur- 
rency or  to  lavish  expenditures  of  the  General  Govern- 
ment, to  which  in  the  Eastern  States  the  comparative 
activity  of  the  same  period  has  since  been  attributed; 
for,  in  spite  of  legal  tender  laws,  the  Pacific  Coast  adhered 
to  a  coin  currency,  and  the  taxation  of  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment took  away  very  much  more  than  was  returned 
in  Federal  expenditures.  It  was  attributable  solely  to 
normal  causes,  for,  though  placer  mining  was  declining, 
the  Nevada  silver  mines  were  being  opened^  wheat  and 


J874  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

wool  were  beginning  to  take  the  place  of  gold  in  the 
table  of  exports,  and  an  increasing  population  and  the 
improvement  in  the  methods  of  production  and  exchange 
were  steadily  adding  to  the  efficiency  of  labor. 

With  this  material  progress  went  on  a  steady  enhance- 
ment in  land  values — its  consequence.  This  steady 
advance  engendered  a  speculative  advance,  which,  with 
the  railroad  era,  ran  up  land  values  in  every  direction. 
If  the  population  of  California  had  steadily  grown  when 
the  long,  costly,  fever-haunted  Isthmus  route  was  the 
principal  mode  of  communication  with  the  Atlantic 
States,  it  must,  it  was  thoaght,  increase  enormously  with 
the  opening  of  a  road  which  would  bring  New  York 
harbor  and  San  Francisco  Bay  within  seven  days'  easy 
travel,  and  when  in  the  State  itself  the  locomotive  took 
the  place  of  stage  coach  and  freight  wagon.  The  ex- 
pected increase  of  land  values  which  would  thus  accrue 
was  discounted  in  advance.  Lots  on  the  outskirts  of 
San  Francisco  rose  hundreds  and  thousands  per  cent., 
and  farming  land  was  taken  up  and  held  for  high  prices, 
in  whichever  direction  an  immigrant  was  likely  to  go. 

But  the  anticipated  rush  of  immigrants  did  not  take 
place.  Labor  and  capital  could  not  pay  so  much  for 
land  and  make  fair  returns.  Production  was  checked, 
if  not  absolutely,  at  least  relatively.  As  the  transcon- 
tinental railroad  approached  completion,  instead  of  in- 
creased activity  symptoms  of  depression  began  to  mani- 
fest themselves;  and,  when  it  was  completed,  to  the 
season  of  activity  had  succeeded  a  period  of  depression 
which  has  not  since  been  fully  recovered  from,  during 
which  wages  and  interest  have  steadily  fallen.  What  I 
have  called  the  actual  rent  line,  or  margin  of  cultivation, 
is  thus  (as  well  as  by  the  steady  march  of  improvement 
and  increase  of  population,  which,  though  slower  than  it 
otherwise  would  have  been,  still  goes  on)  approaching 
the  speculative  rent  line,  but  the  tenacity  with  which  a 


Chap.L  CAUSE  OF  IlfDUSTfilAL  DEPRESSIOlf.  275 

speculative  advance  in  the  price  of  land  is  maintained  in 
a  developing  community  is  well  known.* 

Now,  what  thus  went  on  in  California  went  on  in  every 
progressive  section  of  the  Union.  Everywhere  that  a 
railroad  was  built  or  projected,  land  was  monopolized  in 
anticipation,  and  the  benefit  of  the  improvement  was 
discounted  in  increased  land  values.  The  speculative 
advance  in  rent  thus  outrunning  the  normal  advance, 
production  was  checked,  demand  was  decreased,  and 
labor  and  capital  were  turned  back  from  occupations 
more  directly  concerned  with  land,  to  glut  those  in 
which  the  value  of  land  is  a  less  perceptible  element.  It 
is  thus  that  the  rapid  extension  of  railroads  is  related  to 
the  succeeding  depression. 

And  what  went  on  in  the  United  States  went  on  in  a 
greater  or  less  obvious  degree  all  over  the  progressive 
world.  Everywhere  land  values  have  been  steadily  in- 
creasing with  material  progress,  and  everywhere  this 
increase  begot  a  speculative  advance.  The  impulse  of 
the  primary  cause  not  only  radiated  from  the  newer  sec- 
tions of  the  Union  to  the  older  sections,  and  from  the 
United  States  to  Europe,  but  everywhere  the  primary 
cause  was  acting.  And,  hence,  a  world-wide  depression 
of  industry  and  commerce,  begotten  of  a  world-wide 
material  progress. 

There  is  one  thing  which,  it  may  seem,  I  have  over- 
looked, in  attributing  these  industrial  depressions  to  the 
speculative  advance  of  rent  or  land  values  as  a  main  and 

*It  is  astonishing  how  in  a  new  country  of  great  expectations 
speculative  prices  of  land  will  be  kept  up.  It  is  common  to  hear  the 
expression,  "  There  is  no  market  for  real  estate;  you  cannot  sell  it  at 
any  price,"  and  yet,  at  the  same  time,  if  you  goto  buy  it,  unless  you 
find  somebody  who  is  absolutely  compelled  to  sell,  you  must  pay 
the  prices  that  prevailed  when  speculation  ran  high.  For  owners, 
believing  that  land  values  must  ultimately  advance,  hold  on  as  long 
as  they  can. 


276  THE  PEOBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

primary  cause.  The  operation  of  such  a  cause,  though 
it  may  be  rapid,  must  be  progressive — resembling  a  pres- 
sure, not  a  blow.  But  these  industrial  depressions  seem 
to  come  suddenly — they  have,  at  their  beginning,  the 
character  of  a  paroxysm,  followed  by  a  comparative 
lethargy,  as  if  of  exhaustion.  Everything  seems  to  be 
going  on  as  usual,  commerce  and  industry  vigorous  and 
expanding,  when  suddenly  there  comes  a  shock,  as  of  a 
thunderbolt  out  of  a  clear  sky — a  bank  breaks,  a  great 
manufacturer  or  merchant  fails,  and,  as  if  a  blow  had 
thrilled  through  the  entire  industrial  organization,  fail- 
ure succeeds  failure,  and  on  every  side  workmen  are 
discharged  from  employment,  and  capital  shrinks  into 
profitless  security. 

Let  me  explain  what  I  think  to  be  the  reason  of  this: 
To  do  so,  we  must  take  into  account  the  manner  in 
which  exchanges  are  made,  for  it  is  by  exchanges  that  all 
the  varied  forms  of  industry  are  linked  together  into  one 
mutually  related  and  interdependent  organization.  To 
enable  exchanges  to  be  made  between  producers  far  re- 
moved by  space  and  time,  large  stocks  must  be  kept  in 
store  and  in  transit,  and  this,  as  I  have  already  explained, 
I  take  to  be  the  great  function  of  capital,  in  addition  to 
that  of  supplying  tools  and  seed.  These  exchanges  are, 
perhaps  necessarily,  largely  made  upon  credit — that  is  to 
say,  the  advance  upon  one  side  is  made  before  the  return 
is  received  on  the  other. 

Now,  without  stopping  to  inquire  as  to  the  causes,  it  is 
manifest  that  these  advances  are,  as  a  rule,  from  the 
more  highly  organized  and  later  developed  industries  to 
the  more  fundamental.  The  West  Coast  African,  for 
instance,  who  exchanges  palm  oil  and  cocoanuts  for 
gaudy  calico  and  Birmingham  idols,  gets  his  return  im- 
mediately; the  English  merchant,  on  the  contrary,  has 
to  lay  out  of  his  goods  a  long  while  before  he  gets  his 
returns.    The  farmer  can  sell  his  crop  as  soon  as  it  is 


Chap.  I.  CAUSE  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEPEESSION.  277 

harvested,  and  for  cash;  the  great  manufacturer  must 
keep  a  large  stock,  send  his  goods  long  distances  to 
agents,  and,  generally,  sell  on  time.  Thus,  as  advances 
and  credits  are  generally  from  what  we  may  call  the  sec- 
ondary, to  what  we  may  call  the  primary  industries,  it 
follows  that  any  check  to  production  which  proceeds 
from  the  latter  will  not  immediately  manifest  itself  in 
the  former.  The  system  of  advances  and  credits  consti- 
tutes, as  it  were,  an  elastic  connection,  which  will  give 
considerably  before  breaking,  but  which,  when  it  breaks, 
will  break  with  a  snap. 

Or,  to  illustrate  in  another  way  what  I  mean:  The  great 
pyramid  of  Gizeh  is  composed  of  layers  of  masonry,  the 
bottom  layer,  of  course,  supporting  all  the  rest.  Could 
we  by  some  means  gradually  contract  this  bottom  layer, 
the  upper  part  of  the  pyramid  would  for  some  time 
retain  its  form,  and  then,  when  gravitation  at  length 
overcame  the  adhesiveness  of  the  material,  would  not 
diminish  gradually  and  regularly,  but  would  break  off 
suddenly,  in  large  pieces.  Now,  the  industrial  organiza- 
tion may  be  likened  to  such  a  pyramid.  What  is  the 
proportion  which  in  a  given  stage  of  social  development 
the  various  industries  bear  to  each  other,  it  is  difficult, 
and  perhaps  impossible,  to  say;  but  it  is  obvious  that 
there  is  such  a  proportion,  just  as  in  a  printer's  font  of 
type  there  is  a  certain  proportion  between  the  various 
letters.  Each  form  of  industry,  as  it  is  developed  by 
division  of  labor,  springs  from  and  rises  out  of  the  others, 
and  all  rest  ultimately  upon  land;  for,  without  land, 
labor  is  as  impotent  as  would  be  a  man  in  void  space. 
To  make  the  illustration  closer  to  the  condition  of  a 
progressive  country,  imagine  a  pyramid  composed  of  su- 
perimposed layers — the  whole  constantly  growing  and 
expanding.  Imagine  the  growth  of  the  layer  nearest  the 
ground  to  be  checked.  The  others  will  for  a  time  keep 
on  expanding — in  fact,  for  the  moment,  the  tendenc^y 


278  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

•will  be  to  quicker  expansion,  for  the  vital  force  which  is 
refused  scope  on  the  ground  layer  will  strive  to  find  vent 
in  those  above — until,  at  length,  there  is  a  decided  over- 
balance and  a  sudden  crumbling  along  all  the  faces  of 
the  pyramid. 

That  the  main  cause  and  general  course  of  the  recur- 
ring paroxysms  of  industrial  depression,  which  are  becom- 
ing so  marked  a  feature  of  modern  social  life,  are  thus  ex- 
plained, is,  1  think,  clear.  And  let  the  reader  remember 
that  it  is  only  the  main  causes  and  general  courses  of 
such  phenomena  that  we  are  seeking  to  trace  or  that,  in 
fact,  it  is  possible  to  trace  with  any  exactness.  Political 
economy  can  deal,  and  has  need  to  deal,  only  with 
general  tendencies.  The  derivative  forces  are  so  multi- 
form, the  actions  and  reactions  are  so  various,  that  the 
exact  character  of  the  phenomena  cannot  be  predicted. 
"We  know  that  if  a  tree  is  cut  through  it  will  fall,  but 
precisely  in  what  direction  will  be  determined  by  the  in- 
clination of  the  trunk,  the  spread  of  the  branches,  the 
impact  of  the  blows,  the  quarter  and  force  of  the  wind; 
and  even  a  bird  lighting  on  a  twig,  or  a  frightened 
squirrel  leaping  from  bough  to  bough,  will  not  be  with- 
out its  influence.  We  know  that  an  insult  will  arouse  a 
feeling  of  resentment  in  the  human  breast,  but  to  say  how 
far  and  in  what  way  it  will  manifest  itself,  would  require 
a  synthesis  which  would  build  up  the  entire  man  and  all 
his  surroundings,  past  and  present. 

The  manner  in  which  the  suflBcient  cause  to  which  I 
have  traced  them  explains  the  main  features  of  these  in- 
dustrial depressions  is  in  striking  contrast  with  the  con- 
tradictory and  self-contradictory  attempts  which  have 
been  made  to  explain  them  on  the  current  theories  of  the 
distribution  of  wealth.  That  a  speculative  advance  in 
rent  or  land  values  invariably  precedes  each  of  these  sea 
sons  of  industrial  depression  is  everywhere  clear.  That 
they  bear  to  each  other  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect. 


Chap.  I.  CAUSE   OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSION.  279 

is  obvious  to  whomsoever  considers  the  necessary  rela- 
tions between  land  and  labor. 

And  that  the  present  depression  is  running  its  course, 
and  that,  in  the  manner  previously  indicated,  a  new 
equilibrium  is  being  established,  which  will  result  in 
another  season  of  comparative  activity,  may  already  be 
seen  in  the  United  States.  The  normal  rent  line  and  the 
speculative  rent  line  are  being  brought  together:  (1)  By 
the  fall  in  speculative  land  values,  which  is  very  evident 
in  the  reduction  of  rents  and  shrinkage  of  real  estate 
values  in  the  principal  cities.  (2)  By  the  increased  effi- 
ciency of  labor,  arising  from  the  growth  of  population  and 
the  utilization  of  new  inventions  and  discoveries,  some  of 
which  almost  as  important  as  that  of  the  use  of  steam  we 
seem  to  be  on  the  verge  of  grasping.  (3)  By  the  lower- 
ing of  the  habitual  standard  of  interest  and  wages,  which, 
as  to  interest,  is  shown  by  the  negotiation  of  a  govern- 
ment loan  at  four  per  cent.,  and  as  to  wages  is  too  gen- 
erally evident  for  any  special  citation.  When  the  equi- 
librium is  thus  re-established,  a  season  of  renewed  activ- 
ity, culminating  in  a  speculative  advance  of  land  values 
will  set  in.*  But  wages  and  interest  will  not  recover 
their  lost  ground.  The  net  result  of  all  these  perturba- 
tions or  wave-like  movements  is  the  gradual  forcing  of 
wages  and  interest  toward  their  minimum.  These  tem- 
porary and  recurring  depressions  exhibit,  in  fact,  as  was 
noticed  in  the  opening  chapter,  but  intensifications  of 
the  general  movement  which  accompanies  material 
progress. 

*  'Bhis  was  written  a  year  ago.  It  is  now  (July,  1879)  evident  that 
a  new  period  of  activity  has  commenced,  as  above  predicted,  and  in 
New  York  and  Chicago  real  estate  prices  have  already  begun  to  re- 
cover. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  PEKSISTENCE  OP  POVERTY  AMID  ADVANCING  WEALTH 

The  great  problem,  of  which  these  recurring  seasons 
of  industrial  depression  are  but  peculiar  manifestations, 
is  now,  I  think,  fully  solved,  and  the  social  phenomena 
which  all  over  the  civilized  world  appall  the  philanthro- 
pist and  perplex  the  statesman,  which  hang  with  clouds 
the  future  of  the  most  advanced  races,  and  suggest 
doubts  of  the  reality  and  ultimate  goal  of  what  we  have 
fondly  called  progress,  are  now  explained. 

TJie  reason  why,  in  spite  of  the  increase  of  productive 
power,  wages  constantly  tend  to  a  minitmim  which  will  give 
hut  a  hare  living,  is  that,  with  increase  in  productive  power, 
rent  tends  to  even  greater  increase,  thus  producing  a  co7i' 
stant  tendency  to  the  forcing  down  of  wages. 

In  every  direction,  the  direct  tendency  of  advancing 
civilization  is  to  increase  the  power  of  human  labor  to 
satisfy  human  desires — to  extirpate  poverty,  and  to  ban- 
ish want  and  the  fear  of  want.  All  the  things  in  which 
progress  consists,  all  the  conditions  which  progressive 
communities  are  striving  for,  have  for  their  direct  and 
natural  result  the  improvement  of  the  material  (and  con- 
sequently the  intellectual  and  moral)  condition  of  all 
within  their  influence.  The  growth  of  population,  the 
increase  and  extension  of  exchanges,  the  discoveries  of 
science,  the  march  of  invention,  the  spread  of  education, 
the  improvement  of  government,  and  the  amelioration  of 
manners,  considered  as  material  forces,  have  all  a  direct 
tendency  to  increase  the  productive  power  of  labor — not 


Ohap.n.  THE   PERSISTENCE   OF  POVERTY.  281 

of  some  labor,  but  of  all  labor;  not  in  some  departments 
of  industry,  but  in  all  departments  of  industry;  for  the 
law  of  the  production  of  wealth  in  society  is  the  law  of 
**each  for  all,  and  all  for  each." 

But  labor  cannot  reap  the  benefits  which  advancing 
civilization  thus  brings,  because  they  are  intercepted. 
Land  being  necessary  to  labor,  and  being  reduced  to 
private  ownership,  every  increase  in  the  productive  power 
of  labor  but  increases  rent — the  price  that  labor  must  pay 
for  the  opportunity  to  utilize  its  powers;  and  thus  all 
the  advantages  gained  by  the  march  of  progress  go  to  the 
owners  of  land,  and  wages  do  not  increase.  Wages  can- 
not increase;  for  the  greater  the  earnings  of  labor  the 
greater  the  price  that  labor  must  pay  out  of  its  earnings 
for  the  opportunity  to  make  any  earnings  at  all.  The 
mere  laborer  has  thus  no  more  interest  in  the  general 
advance  of  productive  power  than  the  Cuban  slave  has  in 
advance  in  the  price  of  sugar.  And  just  as  an  advance 
in  ^the  price  of  sugar  may  make  the  condition  of  the 
slave  worse,  by  inducing  the  master  to  drive  him  harder, 
so  may  the  condition  of  the  free  laborer  be  positively,  as 
well  as  relatively,  changed  for  the  worse  by  the  increase 
in  the  productive  power  of  his  labor.  For,  begotten  of 
the  continuous  advance  of  rents,  arises  a  speculative 
tendency  which  discounts  the  effect  of  future  improve- 
ments by  a  still  further  advance  of  rent,  and  thus  tends, 
where  this  has  not  occurred  from  the  normal  advance  of 
rent,  to  drive  wages  down  to  the  slave  point — the  point 
at  which  the  laborer  can  just  live. 

And  thus  robbed  of  all  the  benefits  of  the  increase  in 
productive  power,  labor  is  exposed  to  certain  effects  of 
advancing  civilization  which,  without  the  advantages 
that  naturally  accompany  them,  are  positive  evils,  and  of 
themselves  tend  to  reduce  the  free  laborer  to  the  helpless 
and  degraded  condition  of  the  slave. 

For  all  improvements  which  add  to  productive  power  as 


382  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

civilization  advances  consist  in,  or  necessitate,  a  still  fur- 
ther subdivision  of  labor,  and  the  efficiency  of  the  whole 
body  of  laborers  is  increased  at  the  expense  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  constituents.  The  individual  laborer 
acquires  knowledge  of  and  skill  in  but  an  infinitesimal 
part  of  the  varied  processes  which  are  required  to  supply 
even  the  commonest  wants.  The  aggregate  produce  of 
the  labor  of  a  savage  tribe  is  small,  but  each  member  is 
capable  of  an  independent  life.  He  can  build  his  own 
habitation,  hew  out  or  stitch  together  his  own  canoe, 
make  his  own  clothing,  manufacture  his  own  weapons, 
snares,  tools  and  ornaments.  He  has  all  the  knowledge 
of  nature  possessed  by  his  tribe — knows  what  vegetable 
productions  are  fit  for  food,  and  where  they  may  be 
found;  knows  the  habits  and  resorts  of  beasts,  birds, 
fishes,  and  insects;  can  pilot  himself  by  the  sun  or  the 
stars,  by  the  turning  of  blossoms  or  the  mosses  on  the 
trees;  is,  in  short,  capable  of  supplying  all  his  wants. 
He  may  be  cut  off  from  his  fellows  and  still  live;  and 
thus  possesses  an  independent  power  which  makes  him  a 
free  contracting  party  in  his  relations  to  the  community 
of  which  he  is  a  member. 

Compare  with  this  savage  the  laborer  in  the  lowest 
ranks  of  civilized  society,  whose  life  is  spent  in  pro- 
ducing but  one  thing,  or  oftener  but  the  infinitesimal 
part  of  one  thing,  out  of  the  multiplicity  of  things  that 
constitute  the  wealth  of  society  and  go  to  supply  even 
the  most  primitive  wants;  who  not  only  cannot  make 
even  the  tools  required  for  his  work,  but  often  works 
with  tools  that  he  does  not  own,  and  can  never  hope  to 
own.  Compelled  to  even  closer  and  more  continuous 
labor  than  the  savage,  and  gaining  by  it  no  more  than 
the  savage  gets — the  mere  necessaries  of  life — he  loses 
the  independence  of  the  savage.  He  is  not  only  unable 
to  apply  his  own  powers  to  the  direct  satisfaction  of  his 
own  wants,  but,  without  the  concurrence  of  many  others. 


Chap.n.  THE   PERSISTENCE  OF  POVERTY.  283 

he  is  unable  to  apply  them  indirectly  to  the  satisfaction 
of  his  wants.  He  is  a  mere  link  in  an  enormous  chain  of 
producers  and  consumers,  helpless  to  separate  himself, 
and  helpless  to  move,  except  as  they  move.  The  worse 
his  position  in  society,  the  more  dependent  is  he  on  soci- 
ety; the  more  utterly  unable  does  he  become  to  do  any- 
thing for  himself.  The  very  power  of  exerting  his  labor 
for  the  satisfaction  of  his  wants  passes  from  his  own  con- 
trol, and  may  be  taken  away  or  restored  by  the  actions 
of  others,  or  by  general  causes  over  which  he  has  no  more 
influence  than  he  has  over  the  motions  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem. The  primeval  curse  comes  to  be  looked  upon  as  a 
boon,  and  men  think,  and  talk,  and  clamor,  and  legislate 
as  though  monotonous  manual  labor  in  itself  were  a  good 
and  not  an  evil,  an  end  and  not  a  means.  Under  such 
circumstances,  the  man  loses  the  essential  quality  of 
manhood — the  godlike  power  of  modifying  and  control- 
ling conditions.  He  becomes  a  slave,  a  machine,  a  com- 
modity— a  thing,  in  some  respects,  lower  than  the 
animal. 

I  am  no  sentimental  admirer  of  the  savage  state.  I  do 
not  get  my  ideas  of  the  untutored  children  of  nature 
from  Eousseau,  or  Chateaubriand,  or  Cooper.  I  am  con- 
scious of  its  material  and  mental  poverty,  and  its  low  and 
narrow  range.  I  believe  that  civilization  is  not  only  the 
natural  destiny  of  man,  but  the  enfranchisement,  eleva- 
tion, and  refinement  of  all  his  powers,  and  think  that  it 
is  only  in  such  moods  as  may  lead  him  to  envy  the  cud- 
chewing  cattle,  that  a  man  who  is  free  to  the  advantages 
of  civilization  could  look  with  regret  upon  the  savage 
state.  But,  nevertheless,  I  think  no  one  who  will  open 
his  eyes  to  the  facts  can  resist  the  conclusion  that  there 
are  in  the  heart  of  our  civilization  large  classes  with 
whom  the  veriest  savage  could  not  afford  to  exchange. 
It  is  my  deliberate  opinion  that  if,  standing  on  the 
threshold  of  being,  one  were  given  the  choice  of  entering 


284  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

life  as  a  Tierra  del  Fnegan,  a  black  fellow  of  Australia, 
an  Esquimaux  in  the  Arctic  Circle,  or  among  the  lowest 
classes  in  such  a  highly  civilized  country  as  Great  Brit- 
ain, he  would  make  infinitely  the  better  choice  in  select- 
ing the  lot  of  the  savage.  For  those  classes  who  in  the 
midst  of  wealth  are  condemned  to  want  suffer  all  the 
privations  of  the  savage,  without  his  sense  of  personal 
freedom;  they  are  condemned  to  more  than  his  narrow- 
ness and  littleness,  without  opportunity  for  the  growth 
of  his  rude  virtues;  if  their  horizon  is  wider,  it  is  but  to 
reveal  blessings  that  they  cannot  enjoy. 

There  are  some  to  whom  this  may  seem  like  exaggera- 
tion, but  it  is  only  because  they  have  never  suffered 
themselves  to  realize  the  true  condition  of  those  classes 
upon  whom  the  fron  heel  of  modern  civilization  presses 
with  full  force.  As  De  Tocqueville  observes,  in  one  of 
his  letters  to  Mme.  Swetchine,  "we  so  soon  become  used 
to  the  thought  of  want  that  we  do  not  feel  that  an  evil 
which  grows  greater  to  the  sufferer  the  longer  it  lasts  be- 
comes less  to  the  observer  by  the  very  fact  of  its  dura- 
tion;" and  perhaps  the  best  proof  of  the  justice  of  this 
observation  is  that  in  cities  where  there  exists  a  pauper 
class  and  a  criminal  class,  where  young  girls  shiver  as 
they  sew  for  bread,  and  tattered  and  barefooted  children 
make  a  home  in  the  streets,  money  is  regularly  raised  to 
send  missionaries  to  the  heathen!  Send  missionaries  to 
the  heathen!  it  would  be  laughable  if  it  were  not  so  sad. 
Baal  no  longer  stretches  forth  his  hideous,  sloping  arms; 
but  in  Christian  lands  mothers  slay  their  infants  for  a 
burial  fee!  And  I  chp,llenge  the  production  from  any 
authentic  accounts  of  savage  life  of  such  descriptions  of 
degradation  as  are  to  be  found  in  official  documents  of 
highly  civilized  countries — in  reports  of  Sanitary  Com- 
missioners and  of  inquiries  into  the  condition  of  the 
laboring  poor. 

The  simple  theory  which  I  have  outlined  (if  indeed  it 


Chap.n.  THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  POVERTY.  285 

can  be  called  a  theory  which  is  but  the  recognition  of  the 
most  obvious  relations)  explains  this  conjunction  of  pov- 
erty with  wealth,  of  low  wages  with  high  productive 
power,  of  degradation  amid  enlightenment,  of  virtual 
slavery  in  political  liberty.  It  harmonizes,  as  results 
flowing  from  a  general  and  inexorable  law,  facts  other- 
wise most  perplexing,  and  exhibits  the  sequence  and  re- 
lation between  phenomena  that  without  reference  to  it 
are  diverse  and  contradictory.  It  explains  why  interest 
and  wages  are  higher  in  new  than  in  older  communities, 
though  the  average,  as  well  as  the  aggregate,  production 
of  wealth  is  less.  It  explains  why  improvements  which 
increase  the  productive  power  of  labor  and  capital  in- 
crease the  reward  of  neither.  It  explains  what  is  com- 
monly called  the  conflict  between  labor  and  capital,  while 
proving  the  real  harmony  of  interest  between  them.  It 
cuts  the  last  inch  of  ground  from  under  the  fallacies  of 
protection,  while  showing  why  free  trade  fails  to  beneflt 
permanently  the  working  classes.  It  explains  why  want 
increases  with  abundance,  and  wealth  tends  to  greater 
and  greater  aggregations.  It  explains  the  periodically 
recurring  depressions  of  industry  without  recourse  either 
to  the  absurdity  of  "over-production"  or  the  absurdity 
of  "over-consumption."  It  explains  the  enforced  idle- 
ness of  large  numbers  of  would-be  producers,  which 
wastes  the  productive  force  of  advanced  communities, 
without  the  absurd  assumption  that  there  is  too  little 
work  to  do  or  that  there  are  too  many  to  do  it.  It  ex- 
plains the  ill  effects  upon  the  laboring  classes  which 
often  follow  the  introduction  of  machinery,  without 
denying  the  natural  advantages  which  the  use  of  ma- 
chinery gives.  It  explains  the  vice  and  misery  which 
show  themselves  amid  dense  population,  without  at- 
tributing to  the  laws  of  the  All- Wise  and  All-Beneficent 
defects  which  belong  only  to  the  short-sighted  and  selfish 
enactments  of  men. 


286  THE  PROBLEM   SOLVED.  Book  V. 

This  explanation  is  in  accordance  with  all  the  facts. 
,  Look  over  the  world  to-day.  In  countries  the  most 
widely  differing — under  conditions  the  most  diverse  as  to 
government,  as  to  industries,  as  to  tariffs,  as  to  currency 
— you  will  find  distress  among  the  working  classes;  but 
everywhere  that  you  thus  find  distress  and  destitution  in 
the  midst  of  wealth  you  will  find  that  the  land  is  monop- 
olized; that  instead  of  being  treated  as  the  common 
property  of  the  whole  people,  it  is  treated  as  the  private 
property  of  individuals;  that,  for  its  use  by  labor,  large 
revenues  are  extorted  from  the  earnings  of  labor.  Look 
over  the  WQrld  to-day,  comparing  different  countries  with 
each  other,  and  you  will  see  that  it  is  not  the  abundance 
of  capital  or  the  productiveness  of  labor  that  makes 
wages  high  or  low;  but  the  extent  to  which  the  monopo- 
lizers of  land  can,  in  rent,  levy  tribute  upon  the  earnings 
of  labor.  Is  it  not  a  notorious  fact,  known  to  the  most 
ignorant,  that  new  countries,  where  the  aggregate  wealth 
is  small,  but  where  land  is  cheap,  are  always  better  coun- 
tries for  the  laboring  classes  than  the  rich  countries, 
where  land  is  dear?  Wherever  you  find  land  relatively 
low,  will  you  not  find  wages  relatively  high?  And 
wherever  land  is  high,  will  you  not  find  wages  low?  As 
land  increases  in  value,  poverty  deepens  and  pauperism 
appears.  In  the  new  settlements,  where  land  is  cheap, 
you  will  find  no  beggars,  and  the  inequalities  in  condi- 
tion are  very  slight.  In  the  great  cities,  where  land  is 
80  valuable  that  it  is  measured  by  the  foot,  you  will  find 
the  extremes  of  poverty  and  of  luxury.  And  this  dis- 
parity in  condition  between  the  two  extremes  of  the  social 
scale  may  always  be  measured  by  the  price  of  land. 
Land  in  New  York  is  more  valuable  than  in  San  Fran- 
cisco; and  in  New  York,  the  San  Franciscan  may  see 
squalor  and  misery  that  will  make  him  stand  aghast. 
Land  is  more  valuable  in  London  than  in  New  York; 


Chap.  II.  THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  POVERTY.  287 

and  in  London,  there  is  squalor  and  destitution  worse 
than  that  of  New  York. 

Compare  the  same  country  in  different  times,  and  the 
same  relation  is  obvious.  As  the  result  of  much  investi- 
gation, Hallam  says  he  is  convinced  that  the  wages  of 
manual  labor  were  greater  in  amount  in  England  during 
the  middle  ages  than  they  are  now.  Whether  this  is  so 
or  not,  it  is  evident  that  they  could  not  have  been  much, 
if  any,  less.  The  enormous  increase  in  the  efficiency  of 
labor,  which  even  in  agriculture  is  estimated  at  seven  or 
eight  hundred  per  cent.,  and  in  many  branches  of  indus- 
try is  almost  incalculable,  has  only  added  to  rent.  The 
rent  of  agricultural  land  in  England  is  now,  according  to 
Professor  Kogers,  120  times  as  great,  measured  in 
money,  as  it  was  500  years  ago,  and  14  times  as  great, 
measured  in  wheat;  while  in  the  rent  of  building  land, 
and  mineral  land,  the  advance  has  been  enormously 
greater.  According  to  the  estimate  of  Professor  Faw- 
cett,  the  capitalized  rental  value  of  the  land  of  England 
now  amounts  to  £4,500,000,000,  or  $21,870,000,000— that 
is  to  say,  a  few  thousand  of  the  people  of  England  hold  a 
lien  upon  the  labor  of  the  rest,  the  capitalized  value  of 
which  is  more  than  twice  as  great  as,  at  the  average  price 
of  Southern  negroes  in  1860  would  be  the  value  of  her 
whole  population  were  they  slaves. 

In  Belgium  and  Flanders,  in  France  and  Germany,  the 
rent  and  selling  price  of  agricultural  land  have  doubled 
within  the  last  thirty  years.*  In  short,  increased  power 
of  production  has  everywhere  added  to  the  value  of  land; 
nowhere  has  it  added  to  the  value  of  labor;  for  though 
actual  wages  may  in  some  places  have  somewhat  risen,  the 
rise  is  clearly  attributable  to  other  causes.  In  more 
places  they  have  fallen — that  is,  where  it  has  been  pos- 
sible for  them  to  fall — for  there  is  a  minimum  below 

*  Systems  of  Land  Tenure,  published  by  the  Cobden  Club. 


e88  THE  PROBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

which  laborers  cannot  keep  up  their  numbers.  And, 
everywhere,  wages,  as  a  proportion  of  the  produce,  have 
decreased. 

How  the  Black  Death  brought  about  the  great  rise  of 
wages  in  England  in  the  Fourteenth  Century  is  clearly 
discernible,  in  the  efforts  of  the  land  holders  to  regulate 
wages  by  statute.  That  that  awful  reduction  in  popula- 
tion, instead  of  increasing,  really  reduced  the  effective 
power  of  labor,  there  can  be  no  doubt;  but  the  lessening 
of  competition  for  land  still  more  greatly  reduced  rent, 
and  wages  advanced  so  largely  that  force  and  penal  laws 
were  called  in  to  keep  them  down.  The  reverse  effect 
followed  the  monopolization  of  land  that  went  on  in 
England  during  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  in  the  in  clo- 
sure of  commons  and  the  division  of  the  church  lands 
between  the  panders  and  parasites  who  were  thus  en- 
abled to  found  noble  families.  The  result  was  the  same 
as  that  to  which  a  speculative  increase  in  land  values 
tends.  According  to  Malthus  (who,  in  his  ''Principles  of 
Political  Economy,"  mentions  the  fact  without  connect- 
ing it  with  land  tenures),  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VII., 
half  a  bushel  of  wheat  would  purchase  but  little  more 
than  a  day's  common  labor,  but  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
reign  of  Elizabeth,  half  a  bushel  of  wheat  would  purchase 
three  days'  common  labor.  I  can  hardly  believe  that  the 
reduction  in  wages  could  have  been  so  great  as  this  com- 
parison would  indicate;  but  that  there  was  a  reduction  in 
common  wages,  and  great  distress  among  the  laboring 
classes,  is  evident  from  the  complaints  of  * 'sturdy 
vagrants"  and  the  statutes  made  to  suppress  them.  The 
rapid  monopolization  of  the  land,  the  carrying  of  the 
speculative  rent  line  beyond  the  normal  rent  line,  pro- 
duced tramps  and  paupers,  just  as  like  effects  from  like 
causes  have  lately  been  evident  in  the  United  States. 

"Land  which  went  heretofore  for  twenty  or  forty 
pounds  a  year,"  said  Hugh  Latimer,  "now  is  let  for  fifty 


Chap.  It  THE  PEKSISTEJfCE  OF   POVERTY.  289 

or  a  hundred.  My  father  was  a  yeoman,  and  had  no 
lands  of  his  own;  only  he  had  a  farm  at  a  rent  of  three  or 
four  pounds  by  the  year  at  the  uttermost,  and  thereupon 
he  tilled  so  much  as  kept  half  a  dozen  men.  He  had 
walk  for  a  hundred  sheep,  and  my  mother  milked  thirty 
kine;  he  was  able  and  did  find  the  King  a  harness  with 
himself  and  his  horse  when  he  came  to  the  place  that  he 
should  receive  the  King's  wages.  I  can  remember  that  I 
buckled  his  harness  when  he  went  to  Blackheath  Field. 
He  kept  me  to  school;  he  married  my  sisters  with  five 
pound  apiece,  so  that  he  brought  them  up  in  godliness 
and  fear  of  God.  He  kept  hospitality  for  his  neighbors 
and  some  alms  he  gave  to  the  poor.  And  all  this  he  did 
of  the  same  farm,  where  he  that  now  hath  it  payeth  six- 
teen pounds  rent  or  more  by  year,  and  is  not  able  to  do 
anything  for  his  Prince,  for  himself,  nor  for  his  children, 
nor  to  give  a  cup  of  drink  to  the  poor.'* 

"In  this  way,"  said  Sir  Thomas  More,  referring  to  the 
ejectment  of  small  farmers  which  characterizsed  this  ad- 
vance of  rent,  "it  comes  to  pass  that  these  poor  wretches, 
men,  women,  husbands,  orphans,  widows,  parents  with 
little  children,  householders  greater  in  number  than  in 
wealth,  all  of  these  emigrate  from  their  native  fields, 
without  knowing  where  to  go.'* 

And  so  from  the  stuff  of  the  Latimers  and  Mores — 
from  the  sturdy  spirit  that  amid  the  flames  of  the  Oxford 
stake  cried,  "Play  the  man.  Master  Ridley!"  and  the 
mingled  strength  and  sweetness  that  neither  prosperity 
could  taint  nor  the  ax  of  the  executioner  abash — were 
evolved  thieves  and  vagrants,  the  mass  of  criminality  and 
pauperism  that  still  blights  the  innermost  petals  and  preys 
a  gnawing  worm  at  the  root  of  England's  rose. 

But  it  were  as  well  to  cite  historical  illustrations  of 
the  attraction  of  gravitation.  The  principle  is  as  uni- 
versal and  as  obvious.  That  rent  must  reduce  wages,  is 
as  clear  as  that  the  greater  the  subtractor  the  less  the 


290  THE  PEOBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

remainder.  That  rent  does  reduce  wages,  any  one, 
wherever  situated,  can  see  by  merely  looking  around 
him. 

There  is  no  mystery  as  to  the  cause  which  so  suddenly 
and  so  largely  raised  wages  in  California  in  1849,  and  in 
Australia  in  1852.  It  was  the  discovery  of  the  placer 
mines  in  unappropriated  land  to  which  labor  was  free 
that  raised  the  wages  of  cooks  in  San  Francisco  restau- 
rants to  $500  a  month,  and  left  ships  to  rot  in  the  harbor 
without  officers  or  crew  until  their  owners  would  consent 
to  pay  rates  that  in  any  other  part  of  the  globe  seemed 
fabulous.  Had  these  mines  been  on  appropriated  land, 
or  had  they  been  immediately  monopolized  so  that  rent 
could  have  arisen,  it  would  have  been  land  values  that 
would  have  leaped  upward,  not  wages.  The  Comstock 
lode  has  been  richer  than  the  placers,  but  the  Comstock 
lode  was  readily  monopolized,  and  it  is  only  by  virtue  of 
the  strong  organization  of  the  Miners'  Association  and 
the  fears  of  the  damage  which  it  might  do,  that  enables 
men  to  get  four  dollars  a  day  for  parboiling  themselves 
two  thousand  feet  underground,  where  the  air  that  they 
breathe  must  be  pumped  down  to  them.  The  wealth  of 
the  Comstock  lode  has  added  to  rent.  The  selling  price 
of  these  mines  runs  up  into  hundreds  of  millions,  and  it 
has  produced  individual  fortunes  whose  monthly  returns 
can  be  estimated  only  in  hundreds  of  thousands,  if  not  in 
millions.  Nor  is  there  any  mystery  about  the  cause 
which  has  operated  to  reduce  wages  in  California  from 
the  maximum  of  the  early  days  to  very  nearly  a  level 
with  wages  in  the  Eastern  States,  and  that  is  still  operat- 
ing to  reduce  them.  The  productiveness  of  labor  has  not 
decreased,  on  the  contrary  it  has  increased,  as  I  have  be- 
fore shown;  but,  out  of  what  it  produces  labor  has  now 
to  pay  rent.  As  the  placer  deposits  were  exhausted, 
labor  had  to  resort  to  the  deeper  mines  and  to  agricul- 
tural land,  but  monopolization  of  these  being  permitted. 


Chap.  11.  THE   PEESISTENCE  OF  POVERTY.  291 

men  now  walk  the  streets  of  San  Francisco  ready  to  go  to 
work  for  almost  anything — for  natural  opportunities  are 
now  no  longer  free  to  labor. 

The  truth  is  self-evident.  Put  to  any  one  capable  of 
consecutive  thought  this  question: 

"Suppose  there  should  arise  from  the  English  Channel 
or  the  German  Ocean  a  No-man's  land  on  which  common 
labor  to  an  unlimited  amount  should  be  able  to  make  ten 
shillings  a  day  and  which  should  remain  unappropriated 
and  of  free  access,  like  the  commons  which  once  com- 
prised so  large  a  part  of  English  soil.  What  would  be 
the  effect  upon  wages  in  England?'* 

He  would  at  once  tell  you  that  common  wages 
throughout  England  must  soon  increase  to  ten  shillings 
a  day. 

And  in  response  to  another  question,  "What  would  be 
the  effect  on  rents?"  he  would  at  a  moment's  reflection 
say  that  rents  must  necessarily  fall;  and  if  bethought  out 
the  next  step  he  would  tell  you  that  all  this  would  hap- 
pen without  any  very  large  part  of  English  labor  being 
diverted  to  the  new  natural  opportunities,  or  the  forms 
and  direction  of  industry  being  much  changed;  only  that 
kind  of  production  being  abandoned  which  now  yields  to 
labor  and  to  landlord  together  less  than  labor  could  se- 
cure on  the  new  opportunities.  The  great  rise  in  wages 
would  be  at  the  expense  of  rent. 

Take  now  the  same  man  or  another — some  hard-headed 
business  man,  who  has  no  theories,  but  knows  how  to 
make  money.  Say  to  him:  "Here  is  a  little  village;  in 
ten  years  it  will  be  a  great  city — in  ten  years  the  railroad 
will  have  taken  the  place  of  the  stage  coach,  the  electric 
light  of  the  candle;  it  will  abound  with  all  the  ma- 
chinery and  improvements  that  so  enormously  multiply 
the  effective  power  of  labor.  Will,  in  ten  years,  interest 
be  any  higher?" 

He  will  tell  you,  "Nol" 


292  THE   PROBLEM   SOLVED.  Book  V. 

"Will  the  wages  of  common  labor  be  any  higher;  will 
it  be  easier  for  a  man  who  has  nothing  but  his  labor  to 
make  an  independent  living?*' 

He  will  tell  you,  "No;  the  wages  of  common  labor  will 
not  be  any  higher;  on  the  contrary,  all  the  chances  are 
that  they  will  be  lower;  it  will  not  be  easier  for  the  mere 
laborer  to  make  an  independent  living;  the  chances  are 
that  it  will  be  harder.'* 

"What,  then,  will  be  higher?" 

"Kent;  the  value  of  land.  Go,  get  yourself  a  piece  of 
ground,  and  hold  possession." 

And  if,  under  such  circumstances,  you  take  his  advice, 
you  need  do  nothing  more.  You  may  sit  down  and 
smoke  your  pipe;  you  may  lie  around  like  the  lazzaroni 
of  Naples  or  the  leperos  of  Mexico;  you  may  go  up  in  a 
balloon,  or  down  a  hole  in  the  ground;  and  without  doing 
one  stroke  of  work,  without  adding  one  iota  to  the 
wealth  of  the  community,  in  ten  years  you  will  be  rich! 
In  the  new  city  you  may  have  a  luxurious  mansion;  but 
among  its  public  buildings  will  be  an  almshouse. 

In  all  our  long  investigation  we  have  been  advancing 
to  this  simple  truth:  That  as  land  is  necessary  to  the 
exertion  of  labor  in  the  production  of  wealth,  to  com- 
mand the  land  which  is  necessary  to  labor,  is  to  command 
all  the  fruits  of  labor  save  enough  to  enable  labor  to 
exist.  We  have  been  advancing  as  through  an  enemy's 
country,  in  which  every  step  must  be  secured,  every  posi- 
tion fortified,  and  every  by-path  explored;  for  this  simple 
truth,  in  its  application  to  social  and  political  problems,  is 
hid  from  the  great  masses  of  men  partly  by  its  very 
simplicity,  and  in  greater  part  by  widespread  fallacies 
and  erroneous  habits  of  thought  which  lead  them  to  look 
in  every  direction  but  the  right  one  for  an  explanation 
of  the  evils  which  oppress  and  threaten  the  civilized 
world.  And  back  of  these  elaborate  fallacies  and  mis- 
leading theories  is  an  active,  energetic  power,  a  power 


Chap.n.  THE  PEBSISTEKCE  OP  POVERTY.  293 

that  in  every  country,  be  its  political  forms  what  they 
may,  writes  laws  and  molds  thought — the  power  of  a  vast 
and  dominant  pecuniary  interest. 

But  so  simple  and  so  clear  is  this  truth,  that  to  see  it 
fully  once  is  always  to  recognize  it.  There  are  pictures 
which,  though  looked  at  again  and  again,  present  only  a 
confused  labyrinth  of  lines  or  scroll  work — a  landscape, 
trees,  or  something  of  the  kind — until  once  the  attention 
is  called  to  the  fact  that  these  things  make  up  a  face  or  a 
figure.  This  relation  once  recognized,  is  always  after- 
ward clear.  It  is  so  in  this  case.  In  the  light  of  this 
truth  all  social  facts  group  themselves  in  an  orderly  re- 
lation, and  the  most  diverse  phenomena  are  seen  to 
spring  from  one  great  principle.  It  is  not  in  the  rela- 
tions of  capital  and  labor;  it  is  not  in  the  pressure  of 
population  against  subsistence,  that  an  explanation  of 
the  unequaled  development  of  our  civilization  is  to  be 
found.  The  great  cause  of  inequality  in  the  distribution 
of  wealth  is  inequality  in  the  ownership  of  land.  The 
ownership  of  land  is  the  great  fundamental  fact  which 
ultimately  determines  the  social,  the  political,  and  con- 
sequently the  intellectual  and  moral  condition  of  a  peo- 
ple. And  it  must  be  so.  For  land  is  the  habitation  of 
man,  the  storehouse  upon  which  he  must  draw  for  all  his 
needs,  the  material  to  which  his  labor  must  be  applied 
for  the  supply  of  all  his  desires;  for  even  the  products 
of  the  sea  cannot  be  taken,  the  light  of  the  sun  enjoyed, 
or  any  of  the  forces  of  nature  utilized,  without  the  use 
of  land  or  its  products.  On  the  land  we  are  born,  from 
it  we  live,  to  it  we  return  again — children  of  the  soil  as 
truly  as  is  the  blade  of  grass  or  the  flower  of  the  field. 
Take  away  from  man  all  that  belongs  to  land,  and  he  is 
but  a  disembodied  spirit.  Material  progress  cannot  rid 
us  of  our  dependence  upon  land;  it  can  but  add  to  the 
power  of  producing  wealth  from  land;  and  hence,  when 
land  is  monopolized,  it  might  go  on  to  infinity  without 


294  THE  PKOBLEM  SOLVED.  Book  V. 

increasing  wages  or  improving  the  condition  of  those  who 
have  but  their  labor.  It  can  but  add  to  the  value  of 
land  and  the  power  which  its  possession  gives.  Every- 
where, in  all  times,  among  all  peoples,  the  possession  of 
land  is  the  base  of  aristocracy,  the  foundation  of  great 
fortunes,  the  source  of  power.  As  said  the  Brahmins, 
ages  ago — 

*^To  whomsoever  the  soil  at  any  time  belongs,  to  him  he- 
long  the  fruits  of  it.  White  parasols  and  elephants  mad 
with  pride  are  the  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land." 


BOOK  VI. 

THE  BEMEDY. 


CHAPTER  I. — INSUFFICIENCY  OF  REMEDIES  CURRENTLY 

ADVOCATED. 
CHAPTER  II. — THE  TRUE  REMEDY. 


A  new  and  fair  division  of  the  goods  and  rights  of  this  world 
should  be  the  main  object  of  those  who  conduct  human  affairs. — 
De  Toegueville. 


"When  the  object  is  to  raise  the  permanent  condition  of  a  people, 
small  means  do  not  merely  produce  small  effects ;  they  produce  no 
effect  at  all. — John  Bttui/rt  MUL 


CHAPTER  I. 

INSTJTFICIEN'CT  OP  REMEDIES  CURRENTLY  ADVOCATED. 

In  tracing  to  its  source  the  cause  of  increasing  poverty 
amid  advancing  wealth,  we  have  discovered  the  remedy; 
but  before  passing  to  that  branch  of  our  subject  it  will 
be  well  to  review  the  tendencies  or  remedies  which  are 
currently  relied  on  or  advocated.  The  remedy  to  which 
our  conclusions  point  is  at  once  radical  and  simple — so 
radical  that,  on  the  one  side,  it  will  not  be  fairly  consid- 
ered so  long  as  any  faith  remains  in  the  efficacy  of  less 
caustic  measures;  so  simple  that,  on  the  other  side,  its 
real  efficacy  and  comprehensiveness  are  likely  to  be  over- 
looked, until  the  effect  of  more  elaborate  measures  is 
estimated. 

The  tendencies  and  measures  which  current  literature 
and  discussions  show  to  be  more  or  less  relied  on  or  ad- 
vocated as  calculated  to  relieve  poverty  and  distress 
among  the  masses  may  be  divided  into  six  classes.  I  do 
not  mean  that  there  are  so  many  distinct  parties  or 
schools  of  thought,  but  merely  that,  for  the  purpose  of 
our  inquiry,  prevailing  opinions  and  proposed  measures 
may  be  so  grouped  for  review.  Eemedies  which  for  the 
sake  of  greater  convenience  and  clearness  we  shall  con- 
sider separately  are  often  combined  in  thought. 

There  are  many  persons  who  still  retain  a  comfortable 
belief  that  material  progress  will  ultimately  extirpate 
poverty,  and  there  are  many  who  look  to  prudential  re- 
straint upon  the  increase  of  population  as  the  most 
efficacious  means,  but  the  fallacy  of  these  views  has  al- 


398  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

ready  been  suflSciently  shown.     Let  us  now  consider  what 
may  be  hoped  for: 

I.     From  greater  economy  in  government. 

II.  From  the  better  education  of  the  working  classes 
and  improved  habits  of  industry  and  thrift. 

III.  From  combinations  of  workmen  for  the  advance 
of  wages. 

IV.  From  the  co-operation  of  labor  and  capital. 

V.     From  governmental  direction  and  interference. 

VI.     From  a  more  general  distribution  of  land. 

Under  these  six  heads  I  think  we  may  in  essential  form 
review  all  hopes  and  propositions  for  the  relief  of  social 
distress  short  of  the  simple  but  far-reaching  measure 
which  I  shall  propose. 

/. — From  Greater  Economy  in  Government. 

Until  a  very  few  years  ago  it  was  an  article  of  faith 
with  Americans — a  belief  shared  by  European  liberals— 
that  the  poverty  of  the  down-trodden  masses  of  the  Old 
World  was  due  to  aristocratic  and  monarchical  institu- 
tions. This  belief  has  rapidly  passed  away  with  the  ap- 
pearance in  the  United  States,  under  republican  institu- 
tions, of  social  distress  of  the  same  kind,  if  not  of  the 
same  intensity,  as  that  prevailing  in  Europe.  But  social 
distress  is  still  largely  attributed  to  the  immense  burdens 
which  existing  governments  impose — the  great  debts, 
the  military  and  naval  establishments,  the  extravagance 
which  is  characteristic  as  well  of  republican  as  of  mo- 
narchical rulers,  and  especially  characteristic  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  great  cities.  To  these  must  be  added,  in 
the  United  States,  the  robbery  involved  in  the  protective 
tariff,  which  for  every  twenty-five  cents  it  puts  in  the 
treasury  takes  a  dollar  and  it  may  be  four  or  five  out  of 
the  pocket  of  the  consumer.  Now,  there  seems  to  be  an 
evident  connection  between  the  immense  sums  thus 
taken  from  the  people  and  the  privations  of  the  lower 


Chap.L        INSUFFICIENCY  OP  PROPOSED  REMEDIES.  299 

classes,  and  it  is  upon  a  superficial  view  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  a  reduction  in  the  enormous  burdens  thus 
uselessly  imposed  would  make  it  easier  for  the  poorest  to 
get  a  living.  But  a  consideration  of  the  matter  in  the 
light  of  the  economic  principles  heretofore  traced  out 
will  show  that  this  would  not  be  the  effect.  A  reduction 
in  the  amount  taken  from  the  aggregate  produce  of  a 
community  by  taxation  would  be  simply  equivalent  to 
an  increase  in  the  power  of  net  production.  It  would  in 
effect  add  to  the  productive  power  of  labor  just  as  do  the 
increasing  density  of  population  and  improvement  in  the 
arts.  And  as  the  advantage  in  the  one  case  goes,  and 
must  go,  to  the  owners  of  land,  in  increased  rent,  so 
would  the  advantage  in  the  other. 

From  the  produce  of  the  labor  and  capital  of  England 
are  now  supported  the  burden  of  an  immense  debt,  an 
Established  Church,  an  expensive  royal  family,  a  large 
number  of  sinecurists,  a  great  army  and  great  navy. 
Suppose  the  debt  repudiated,  the  Church  disestablished, 
the  royal  family  set  adrift  to  make  a  living  for  them- 
selves, the  sinecurists  cut  off,  the  army  disbanded,  the 
oflBcers  and  men  of  the  navy  discharged  and  the  ships 
sold.  An  enormous  reduction  in  taxation  would  thus 
become  possible.  There  would  be  a  great  addition  to 
the  net  produce  which  remains  to  be  distributed  among 
the  parties  to  production.  But  it  would  be  only  such  an 
addition  as  improvement  in  the  arts  has  been  for  a  long 
time  constantly  making,  and  not  so  great  an  addition  as 
steam  and  machinery  have  made  within  the  last  twenty 
or  thirty  years.  And  as  these  additions  have  not  allevi- 
ated pauperism,  but  have  only  increased  rent,  so  would 
this.  English  land  owners  would  reap  the  whole  ben- 
efit. I  will  not  dispute  that  if  all  these  things  could  be 
done  suddenly,  and  without  the  destruction  and  expense 
involved  in  a  revolution,  there  might  be  a  temporary  im- 
provement in  the  condition  of  the  lowest  class;  but  such 


300  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

a  sudden  and  peaceable  reform  is  manifestly  impossible. 
And  if  it  were,  any  temporary  improvement  would,  by 
the  process  we  now  see  going  on  in  the  United  States, 
be  ultimately  swallowed  up  by  increased  land  values. 

And,  so,  in  the  United  States,  if  we  were  to  reduce 
public  expenditures  to  the  lowest  possible  point,  and  meet 
them  by  revenue  taxation,  the  benefit  could  certainly 
not  be  greater  than  that  which  railroads  have  brought. 
There  would  be  more  wealth  left  in  the  hands  of  the  peo- 
ple as  a  whole,  just  as  the  railroads  have  put  more  wealth 
in  the  hands  of  the  people  as  a  whole,  but  the  same  in- 
exorable laws  would  operate  as  to  its  distribution.  The 
condition  of  those  who  live  by  their  labor  would  not  ulti- 
mately be  improved. 

A  dim  consciousness  of  this  pervades — or,  rather,  is 
beginning  to  pervade — the  masses,  and  constitutes  one 
of  the  grave  political  diflBculties  that  are  closing  in 
around  the  American  republic.  Those  who  have  nothing 
but  their  labor,  and  especially  the  proletarians  of  the 
cities — a  growing  class — care  little  about  the  prodigality 
of  government,  and  in  many  cases  are  disposed  to  look 
upon  it  as  a  good  thing — '"'furnishing  employment,"  or 
"putting  money  in  circulation."  Tweed,  who  robbed 
New  York  as  a  guerrilla  chief  might  levy  upon  a  cap- 
tured town  (and  who  was  but  a  type  of  the  new  banditti 
who  are  grasping  the  government  of  all  our  cities),  was 
undoubtedly  popular  with  a  majority  of  the  voters, 
though  his  thieving  was  notorious,  and  his  spoils  were 
blazoned  in  big  diamonds  and  lavish  personal  expendi- 
ture. After  his  indictment,  he  was  triumphantly  elected 
to  the  Senate;  and,  even  when  a  recaptured  fugitive, 
was  frequently  cheered  on  his  way  from  court  to  prison. 
He  had  robbed  the  public  treasury  of  many  millions,  but 
the  proletarians  felt  that  he  had  not  robbed  them.  And 
the  verdict  of  political  economy  is  the  same  as  theirs. 

Let  me  be  clearly  understood.     I  do  not  say  that  gov- 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PROPOSED  REMEDIES.  301 

ernmental  economy  is  not  desirable;  but  simply  that  re- 
duction in  the  expenses  of  government  can  have  no 
direct  effect  in  extirpating  poverty  and  increasing  wages, 
so  long  as  land  is  monopolized. 

Although  this  is  true,  yet  even  with  sole  reference  to 
the  interests  of  the  lowest  class,  no  effort  should  be 
spared  to  keep  down  useless  expenditures.  The  more 
complex  and  extravagant  government  becomes,  the  more 
it  gets  to  be  a  power  distinct  from  and  independent  of 
the  people,  and  the  more  difficult  does  it  become  to  bring 
questions  of  real  public  policy  to  a  popular  decision. 
Look  at  our  elections  in  the  United  States — upon  what 
do  they  turn?  The  most  momentous  problems  are  press- 
ing upon  us,  yet  so  great  is  the  amount  of  money  in  poli- 
tics, so  large  are  the  personal  interests  involved,  that  the 
most  important  questions  of  government  are  but  little 
considered.  The  average  American  voter  has  prejudices, 
party  feelings,  general  notions  of  a  certain  kind,  but  he 
gives  to  the  fundamental  questions  of  government  not 
much  more  thought  than  a  street-car  horse  does  to  the 
profits  of  the  line.  Were  this  not  the  case,  so  many  hoary 
abuses  could  not  have  survived  and  so  many  new  ones 
been  added.  Anything  that  tends  to  make  government 
simple  and  inexpensive  tends  to  put  it  under  control  of 
the  people  and  to  bring  questions  of  real  importance  to 
the  front.  But  no  reduction  in  the  expenses  of  govern- 
ment can  of  itself  cure  or  mitigate  the  evils  that  arise 
from  a  constant  tendency  to  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth. 

II. — From  the  Diffusion  of  Education  and  Improved 
Habits  of  Industry  and  Thrift. 

There  is,  and  always  has  been,  a  widespread  belief 
among  the  more  comfortable  classes  that  the  poverty  and 
suffering  of  the  masses  are  due  to  their  lack  of  industry, 
frugality,  and  intelligence.     This  belief,  which  at  once 


302  THE  EEMEDT.  B»oh  VI. 

soothes  the  sense  of  responsihility  and  flatters  by  its  sug- 
gestion of  superiority,  is  probably  even  more  prevalent 
in  countries  like  the  United  States,  where  all  men  are 
politically  equal,  and  where,  owing  to  the  newness  of 
society,  the  differentiation  into  classes  has  been  of  indi- 
viduals rather  than  of  families,  than  it  is  in  older  coun- 
tries, where  the  lines  of  separation  have  been  longer,  and 
are  more  sharply,  drawn.  It  is  but  natural  for  those  who 
can  trace  their  own  better  circumstances  to  the  superior 
industry  and  frugality  that  gave  them  a  start,  and  the 
superior  intelligence  that  enabled  them  to  take  advantage 
of  every  opportunity,*  to  imagine  that  those  who  remain 
poor  do  so  simply  from  lack  of  these  qualities. 

But  whoever  has  grasped  the  laws  of  the  distribution 
of  wealth,  as  in  previous  chapters  they  have  been  traced 
out,  will  see  the  mistake  in  this  notion.  The  fallacy  is 
similar  to  that  which  would  be  involved  in  the  assertion 
that  every  one  of  a  number  of  competitors  might  win  a 
race.  That  anyone  might  is  true;  that  every  one  might 
is  impossible. 

For,  as  soon  as  land  acquires  a  value,  wages,  as  we 
have  seen,  do  not  depend  upon  the  real  earnings  or  prod- 
uct of  labor,  but  upon  what  is  left  to  labor  after  rent  is 
taken  out;  and  when  land  is  all  monopolized,  as  it  is 
everywhere  except  in  the  newest  communities,  rent  must 
drive  wages  down  to  the  point  at  which  the  poorest  paid 
class  will  be  just  able  to  live  and  reproduce,  and  thus 
wages  are  forced  to  a  minimum  fixed  by  what  is  called 
the  standard  of  comfort — that  is,  the  amount  of  neces- 
saries and  comforts  which  habit  leads  the  working  classes 
to  demand  as  the  lowest  on  which  they  will  consent  to 
maintain  their  numbers.     This  being  the  case,  industry, 

♦  To  say  nothing  of  superior  want  of  conscience,  which  is  often 
the  determining  quality  which  makes  a  millionaire  out  of  one  who 
otherwise  might  have  been  a  poor  man. 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIElfCt"  C>S  PBOPOSED  EEMEDIES.  303 

skill,  frugality,  and  intelligence  can  avail  the  individual 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  superior  to  the  general  level — 
just  as  in  a  race  speed  can  avail  the  runuer  only  in  so  far 
as  it  exceeds  that  of  his  competitors.  If  one  man  work 
harder,  or  with  superior  skill  or  intelligence  than  ordi- 
nary, he  will  get  ahead;  but  if  the  average  of  industry, 
skill,  or  intelligence  be  brought  up  to  the  higher  point, 
the  increased  intensity  of  application  will  secure  but  the 
old  rate  of  wages,  and  he  who  would  get  ahead  must 
work  harder  still. 

One  individual  may  save  money  from  his  wages  by  liv- 
ing as  Dr.  Franklin  did  when,  during  his  apprenticeship 
and  early  journeyman  days,  he  concluded  to  practice 
vegetarianism;  and  many  poor  families  might  be  made 
more  comfortable  by  being  taught  to  prepare  the  cheap 
dishes  to  which  Franklin  tried  to  limit  the  appetite  of  his 
employer  Keimer,  as  a  condition  to  his  acceptance  of  the 
position  of  confuter  of  opponents  to  the  new  religion  of 
which  Keimer  wished  to  become  the  prophet,*  but  if  the 
working  classes  generally  came  to  live  in  that  way,  wages 
would  ultimately  fall  in  proportion,  and  whoever  wished 
to  get  ahead  by  the  practice  of  economy,  or  to  mitigate 
poverty  by  teaching  it,  would  be  compelled  to  devise 
some  still  cheaper  mode  of  keeping  soul  and  body  to- 
gether. If,  under  existing  conditions,  American  me- 
chanics would  come  down  to  the  Chinese  standard  of 
living,  they  would  ultimately  have  to  come  down  to  the 
Chinese  standard  of  wages;  or  if  English  laborers  would 
content  themselves  with  the  rice  diet  and  scanty  clothing 
of  the  Bengalee,  labor  would  soon  be  as  ill  paid  in  Eng- 
land as  in  Bengal.  The  introduction  of  the  potato  into 
Ireland  was  expected  to  improve  the  condition  of  the 
poorer  classes,  by  increasing  the  difference  between  the 

*  Franklin,  in  his  inimitable  way,  relates  how  Keimer  finally  broke 
his  resolution  and  ordering  a  roast  pig  invited  two  lady  friends  to 
dine  with  him,  but  the  pig  being  brought  in  before  the  company  ar- 
rived, Keimer  could  not  resist  the  temptation  and  ate  it  all  himself. 


304  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  VJ. 

wages  they  received  and  the  cost  of  their  living.  The 
consequences  that  did  ensue  were  a  rise  of  rent  and  a 
lowering  of  wages,  and,  with  the  potato  blight,  the  rav- 
ages of  famine  among  a  population  that  had  already  re- 
duced its  standard  of  comfort  so  low  that  the  next  step 
was  starvation. 

And,  so,  if  one  individual  work  more  hours  than  the 
average,  he  will  increase  his  wages;  but  the  wages  of  all 
cannot  be  increased  in  this  way.  It  is  notorious  that  in 
occupations  where  working  hours  are  long,  wages  are  not 
higher  than  where  working  hours  are  shorter;  generally 
the  reverse,  for  the  longer  the  working  day,  the  more 
helpless  does  the  laborer  become — the  less  time  has  he  to 
look  around  him  and  develop  other  powers  than  those 
called  forth  by  his  work;  the  less  becomes  his  ability  to 
change  his  occupation  or  to  take  advantage  of  circum- 
stances. And,  so,  the  individual  workman  who  gets  his 
wife  and  children  to  assist  him  may  thus  increase  his  in- 
come; but  in  occupations  where  it  has  become  habitual 
for  the  wife  and  children  of  the  laborer  to  supplement  his 
work,  it  is  notorious  that  the  wages  earned  by  the  whole 
family  do  not  on  the  average  exceed  those  of  the  head  of 
the  family  in  occupations  where  it  is  usual  for  him  only 
to  work.  Swiss  family  labor  in  watch  making  competes 
in  cheapness  with  American  machinery.  The  Bohemian 
cigar  makers  of  New  York,  who  work,  men,  women,  and 
children,  in  their  tenement-house  rooms,  have  reduced 
the  prices  of  cigar  making  to  less  than  the  Chinese  in 
San  Francisco  were  getting. 

These  general  facts  are  well  known.  They  are  fully 
recognized  in  standard  politico -economic  works,  where, 
however,  they  are  explained  upon  the  Malthusian  theory 
of  the  tendency  of  population  to  multiply  up  to  the 
limit  of  subsistence.  The  true  explanation,  as  I  have 
sufficiently  shown,  is  in  the  tendency  of  rent  to  reduce 
wages. 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PEOPOSED  REMEDIES.  305 

As  to  the  effects  of  education,  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  say  a  few  words  specially,  for  there  is  a  prevailing  dis- 
position to  attribute  to  it  something  like  a  magical  influ- 
ence. Now,  education  is  only  education  in  so  far  as  it 
enables  a  man  more  effectively  to  use  his  natural  powers, 
and  this  is  something  that  what  we  call  education  in  very 
great  part  fails  to  do.  I  remember  a  little  girl,  pretty 
well  along  in  her  school  geography  and  astronomy,  who 
was  much  astonished  to  find  that  the  ground  in  her 
mother's  back  yard  was  really  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
and,  if  you  talk  with  them,  you  will  find  that  a  good  deal 
of  the  knowledge  of  many  college  graduates  is  much  like 
that  of  the  little  girl.  They  seldom  think  any  better, 
and  sometimes  not  so  well  as  men  who  have  never  been 
to  college. 

A  gentleman  who  had  spent  many  years  in  Australia, 
and  knew  intimately  the  habits  of  the  aborigines  (Eev. 
Dr.  Bleesdale),  after  giving  some  instances  of  their  won- 
derful skill  in  the  use  of  their  weapons,  in  foretelling 
changes  in  the  wind  and  weather  and  in  trapping  the 
shyest  birds,  once  said  to  me:  ''I  think  it  a  great  mis- 
take to  look  on  these  black  fellows  as  ignorant.  Their 
knowledge  is  different  from  ours,  but  in  it  they  are  gen- 
erally better  educated.  As  soon  as  they  begin  to  toddle, 
they  are  taught  to  play  with  little  boomerangs  and  other 
weapons,  to  observe  and  to  judge,  and,  when  they  are 
old  enough  to  take  care  of  themselves,  they  are  fully  able 
to  do  so — are,  in  fact,  in  reference  to  the  nature  of  their 
knowledge,  what  I  should  call  well-educated  gentlemen; 
which  is  more  than  I  can  say  for  many  of  our  young  fel- 
lows who  have  had  what  we  call  the  best  advantages,  but 
who  enter  upon  manhood  unable  to  do  anything  either 
for  themselves  or  for  others.*' 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  evident  that  intelligence,  which 
is  or  should  be  the  aim  of  education,  until  it  induces  and 
enables  the  masses  to  discover  and  remove  the  cause  of 


806  TH£  ££MEDY.  Book  Vl 

the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth,  can  operate  upon 
wages  only  by  increasing  the  effective  power  of  labor.  It 
has  the  same  effect  as  increased  skill  or  industry.  And 
it  can  raise  the  wages  of  the  individual  only  in  so  far  as 
it  renders  him  superior  to  others.  When  to  read  and 
write  were  rare  accomplishments,  a  clerk  commanded 
high  respect  and  large  wages,  but  now  the  ability  to  read 
and  write  has  become  so  nearly  universal  as  to  give  no 
advantage.  Among  the  Chinese  the  ability  to  read  and 
write  seems  absolutely  universal,  but  wages  in  China 
touch  the  lowest  possible  point.  The  diffusion  of  intel- 
ligence, except  as  it  may  make  men  discontented  with  a 
state  of  things  which  condemns  producers  to  a  life  of  toil 
while  non-producers  loll  in  luxury,  cannot  tend  to  raise 
wages  generally,  or  in  any  way  improve  the  condition  of 
the  lowest  class — the  "mud-sills"  of  society,  as  a  South- 
ern Senator  once  called  them — who  must  rest  on  the  soil, 
no  matter  how  high  the  superstructure  may  be  carried. 
No  increase  of  the  effective  power  of  labor  can  increase 
general  wages,  so  long  as  rent  swallows  up  all  the  gain. 
This  is  not  merely  a  deduction  from  principles.  It  is  the 
fact,  proved  by  experience.  The  growth  of  knowledge 
and  the  progress  of  invention  have  multiplied  the  effective 
power  of  labor  over  and  over  again  without  increasing 
wages.  In  England  there  are  over  a  million  paupers. 
In  the  United  States  almshouses  are  increasing  and 
wages  are  decreasing. 

It  is  true  that  greater  industry  and  skill,  greater  pru- 
dence, and  a  higher  intelligence,  are,  as  a  rule,  found 
associated  with  a  better  material  condition  of  the  work- 
ing classes;  but  that  this  is  effect,  not  cause,  is  shown  by 
the  relation  of  the  facts.  Wherever  the  material  condi- 
tion of  the  laboring  classes  has  been  improved,  improve- 
ment in  their  personal  qualities  has  followed,  and  wher- 
ever their  material  condition  has  been  depressed,  deterio- 
ration in  these  qualities  has  been  the  result;  but  nowhere 


Chap.l.        INSUFFICIEITCY  OF  PBOPOSED  REMEDIES.  307 

can  improvement  in  material  condition  be  shown  as  the 
result  of  the  increase  of  industry,  skill,  prudence,  or  in- 
telligence in  a  class  condemned  to  toil  for  a  bare  living, 
though  these  qualities  when  once  attained  (or,  rather, 
their  concomitant — the  improvement  in  the  standard  of 
comfort)  offer  a  strong,  and,  in  many  cases,  a  sufficient, 
resistance  to  the  lowering  of  material  condition. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  qualities  that  raise  man  above  the 
animal  are  superimposed  on  those  which  he  shares  with 
the  animal,  and  that  it  is  only  as  he  is  relieved  from  the 
wants  of  his  animal  nature  that  his  intellectual  and  moral 
nature  can  grow.  Compel  a  man  to  drudgery  for  the 
necessities  of  animal  existence,  and  he  will  lose  the  in- 
centive to  industry — the  progenitor  of  skill — and  will 
do  only  what  he  is  forced  to  do.  Make  his  condition 
such  that  it  cannot  be  much  worse,  while  there  is  little 
hope  that  anything  he  can  do  will  make  it  much  better, 
and  he  will  cease  to  look  beyond  the  day.  Deny  him 
leisure — and  leisure  does  not  mean  the  want  of  employ- 
ment, but  the  absence  of  the  need  which  forces  to  uncon- 
genial employment — and  you  cannot,  even  by  running 
the  child  through  a  common  school  and  supplying  the 
man  with  a  newspaper,  make  him  intelligent. 

It  is  true  that  improvement  in  the  material  condition 
of  a  people  or  class  may  not  show  immediately  in  mental 
and  moral  improvement.  Increased  wages  may  at  first 
be  taken  out  in  idleness  and  dissipation.  But  they  will 
ultimately  bring  increased  industry,  skill,  intelligence, 
and  thrift.  Comparisons  between  different  countries; 
between  different  classes  in  the  same  country;  between 
the  same  people  at  different  periods;  and  between  the 
same  people  when  their  conditions  are  changed  by  emi- 
gration, show,  as  an  invariable  result,  that  the  personal 
qualities  of  which  we  are  speaking  appear  as  material 
conditions  are  improved,  and  disappear  as  material  con- 
ditions are  depressed.     Poverty  is  the  Slough  of  Despond 


808  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VI 

which  Bunyan  saw  in  his  dream,  and  into  which  good 
books  may  be  tossed  forever  without  result.  To  make 
people  industrious,  prudent,  skillful,  and  intelligent, 
they  must  be  relieved  from  want.  If  you  would  have  the 
slave  show  the  virtues  of  the  freeman,  you  must  first 
make  him  free. 

II J. — From  Combinations  of  WorTcmen. 

.  It  is  evident  from  the  laws  of  distribution,  as  pre- 
viously traced,  that  combinations  of  workmen  can  ad- 
vance wages,  and  this  not  at  the  expense  of  other  work- 
men, as  is  sometimes  said,  nor  yet  at  the  expense  of 
capital,  as  is  generally  believed;  but,  ultimately,  at  the 
expense  of  rent.  That  no  general  advance  in  wages  can 
be  secured  by  combination;  that  any  advance  in  particu- 
lar wages  thus  secured  must  reduce  other  wages  or  the 
profits  of  capital,  or  both — are  ideas  that  spring  from  the 
erroneous  notion  that  wages  are  drawn  from  capital. 
The  fallacy  of  these  ideas  is  demonstrated,  not  alone  by 
the  laws  of  distribution  as  we  have  worked  them  out,  but 
by  experience,  so  far  as  it  has  gone.  The  advance  of 
wages  in  particular  trades  by  combinations  of  workmen, 
of  which  there  are  many  examples,  has  nowhere  shown 
any  effect  in  lowering  wages  in  other  trades,  or  in  reduc- 
ing the  rate  of  profits.  Except  as  it  may  affect  his  fixed 
capital  or  current  engagements,  a  diminution  of  wages 
can  benefit,  and  an  increase  of  wages  injure  an  employer 
only  in  so  far  as  it  gives  him  an  advantage  or  puts 
him  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  other  employers. 
The  employer  who  first  succeeds  in  reducing  the  wages 
of  his  hands,  or  is  first  compelled  to  pay  an  advance, 
gains  an  advantage,  or  is  put  at  a  disadvantage  in  regard 
to  his  competitors,  which  ceases  when  the  movement  in- 
cludes them  also.  So  far,  however,  as  the  change  in 
wages  affects  his  contracts  or  stock  on  hand,  by  changing 
the  relative  cost  of  production,  it  may  be  to  him  a  real 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PROPOSED  REMEDIES.  309 

gain  or  loss,  though  this  gain  or  loss,  being  purely  rela- 
tive, disappears  when  the  whole  community  is  consid- 
ered. And,  if  the  change  in  wages  works  a  change  in 
relative  demand,  it  may  render  capital  fixed  in  machin- 
ery, buildings,  or  otherwise,  more  or  less  profitable. 
But,  in  this,  a  new  equilibrium  is  soon  reached;  for, 
especially  in  a  progressive  country,  fixed  capital  is  only 
somewhat  less  mobile  than  circulating  capital.  If  there 
is  too  little  in  a  certain  form,  the  tendency  of  capital  to 
assume  that  form  soon  brings  it  up  to  the  required 
amount;  if  there  is  too  much,  the  cessation  of  increment 
soon  restores  the  level. 

But,  while  a  change  in  the  rate  of  wages  in  any  par- 
ticular occupation  may  induce  a  change  in  the  relative 
demand  for  labor,  it  can  produce  no  change  in  the  ag- 
gregate demand.  For  instance,  let  us  suppose  that  a 
combination  of  the  workmen  engaged  in  any  particular 
manufacture  raise  wages  in  one  country,  while  a  combi- 
nation of  employers  reduce  wages  in  the  same  manufac- 
ture in  another  country.  If  the  change  be  great 
enough,  the  demand,  or  part  of  the  demand,  in  the  first 
country  will  now  be  supplied  by  importation  of  such 
manufactures  from  the  second.  But,  evidently,  this  in- 
crease in  importations  of  a  particular  kind  must  neces- 
sitate either  a  corresponding  decrease  in  importations  of 
other  kinds,  or  a  corresponding  increase  in  exportations. 
For,  it  is  only  with  the  produce  of  its  labor  and  capital 
that  one  country  can  demand,  or  can  obtain,  in  exchange, 
the  produce  of  the  labor  and  capital  of  another.  The 
idea  that  the  lowering  of  wages  can  increase,  or  the  in- 
crease of  wages  can  diminish,  the  trade  of  a  country,  is 
as  baseless  as  the  idea  that  the  prosperity  of  a  country 
can  be  increased  by  taxes  on  imports,  or  diminished  by 
the  removal  of  restrictious  on  trade.  If  all  wages  in  any 
particular  country  were  to  be  doubled,  that  country 
would  continue  to  export  and  import  the  same  things. 


310  THE   REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

and  in  the  same  proportions;  for  exchange  is  determined 
not  by  absolute,  but  by  relative,  cost  of  production. 
But,  if  wages  in  some  branches  of  production  were 
doubled,  and  in  others  not  increased,  or  not  increased  so 
much,  there  would  be  a  change  in  the  proportion  of  the 
various  things  imported,  but  no  change  in  the  proportion 
between  exports  and  imports. 

While  most  of  the  objections  made  to  the  combination 
of  workmen  for  the  advance  of  wages  are  thus  baseless, 
while  the  success  of  such  combinations  cannot  reduce 
other  wages,  or  decrease  the  profits  of  capital,  or  injuri- 
ously affect  national  prosperity,  yet  so  great  are  the  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  the  effective  combinations  of  labor- 
ers, that  the  good  that  can  be  accomplished  by  them  is 
extremely  limited,  while  there  are  inherent  disadvantages 
in  the  process. 

To  raise  wages  in  a  particular  occupation  or  occupa- 
tions, which  is  all  that  any  combination  of  workmen  yet 
made  has  been  equal  to  attempting,  is  manifestly  a  task 
the  difficulty  of  which  progressively  increases.  For  the 
higher  are  wages  of  any  particular  kind  raised  above  their 
normal  level  with  other  wages,  the  stronger  are  the  tend- 
encies to  bring  them  back.  Thus,  if  a  printers'  union, 
by  a  successful  or  threatened  strike,  raise  the  wages  of 
typesetting  ten  per  cent,  above  the  normal  rate  as  com- 
pared with  other  wages,  relative  demand  and  supply  are 
at  once  affected.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  a  tendency 
to  a  diminution  of  the  amount  of  typesetting  called  for; 
and,  on  the  other,  the  higher  rate  of  wages  tends  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  compositors  in  ways  the  strongest 
combination  cannot  altogether  prevent.  If  the  increase 
be  twenty  per  cent.,  these  tendencies  are  much  stronger; 
if  it  is  fifty  per  cent.,  they  become  stronger  still,  and  so 
on.  So  that  practically — even  in  countries  like  England, 
where  the  lines  between  different  trades  are  much  more 
distinct  and  difficult  to  pass  than  in  countries  like  the 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PEOPOSED   REMEDIES.  311 

United  States — that  which  trades'  unions,  even  when 
supporting  each  other,  can  do  in  the  way  of  raising  wages 
is  comparatively  little,  and  this  little,  moreover,  is  con- 
fined to  their  own  sphere,  and  does  not  aHect  the  lower 
stratum  of  unorganized  laborers,  whose  condition  most 
needs  alleviation  and  ultimately  determines  that  of  all 
above  them.  The  only  way  by  which  wages  could  be 
raised  to  any  extent  and  with  any  permanence  by  this 
method  would  be  by  a  general  combination,  such  as  was 
aimed  at  by  the  Internationals,  which  should  include 
laborers  of  all  kinds.  But  such  a  combination  may  be 
set  down  as  practically  impossible,  for  the  difiBculties  of 
combination,  great  enough  in  the  most  highly  paid  and 
smallest  trades,  become  greater  and  greater  as  we  descend 
in  the  industrial  scale. 

Nor,  in  the  struggle  of  endurance,  which  is  the  only 
method  which  combinations  not  to  work  for  less  than  a 
certain  minimum  have  of  effecting  the  increase  of  wages, 
must  it  be  forgotten  who  are  the  real  parties  pitted 
against  each  other.  It  is  not  labor  and  capital.  It  is 
laborers  on  the  one  side  and  the  owners  of  land  on  the 
other.  If  the  contest  were  between  labor  and  capital,  it 
would  be  on  much  more  equal  terms.  For  the  power  of 
capital  to  stand  out  is  only  some  little  greater  than  that 
of  labor.  Capital  not  only  ceases  to  earn  anything  when 
not  used,  but  it  goes  to  waste — for  in  nearly  all  its  forms 
it  can  be  maintained  only  by  constant  reproduction.  But 
land  will  not  starve  like  laborers  or  go  to  waste  like  capi- 
tal— its  owners  can  wait.  They  may  be  inconvenienced, 
it  is  true,  but  what  is  inconvenience  to  them,  is  destruc- 
tion to  capital  and  starvation  to  labor. 

The  agricultural  laborers  in  certain  parts  of  England 
are  now  endeavoring  to  combine  for  the  purpose  of  secur- 
ing an  increase  in  their  miserably  low  wages.  If  it  was 
capital  that  was  receiving  the  enormous  difference  be- 
tween the  real  produce  of  their  labor  and  the  pittance 


312  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VL 

they  get  out  of  it,  they  would  have  but  to  make  an 
effective  combination  to  secure  success;  for  the  farmers, 
who  are  their  direct  employers,  can  afford  to  go  without 
labor  but  little,  if  any,  better  than  the  laborers  can  afford 
to  go  without  wages.  But  the  farmers  cannot  yield 
much  without  a  reduction  of  rent;  and  thus  it  is  between 
the  land  owners  and  the  laborers  that  the  real  struggle 
must  come.  Suppose  the  combination  to  be  so  thorough 
as  to  include  all  agricultural  laborers,  and  to  prevent 
from  doing  so  all  who  might  be  tempted  to  take  their 
places.  The  laborers  refuse  to  work  except  at  a  consid- 
erable advance  of  wages;  the  farmers  can  give  it  only  by 
securing  a  considerable  reduction  of  rent,  and  have  no 
way  to  back  their  demands  except  as  the  laborers  back 
theirs,  by  refusing  to  go  on  with  production.  If  culti- 
vation thus  comes  to  a  dead-lock,  the  land  owners  would 
lose  only  their  rent,  while  the  land  improved  by  lying 
fallow.  But  the  laborers  would  starve.  And  if  English 
laborers  of  all  kinds  were  united  in  one  grand  league  for 
a  general  increase  of  wages,  the  real  contest  would  be  the 
same,  and  under  the  same  conditions.  For  wages  could 
not  be  increased  except  to  the  decrease  of  rent;  and  in  a 
general  dead-lock,  land  owners  could  live,  while  laborers 
of  all  sorts  must  starve  or  emigrate.  The  owners  of  the 
land  of  England  are  by  virtue  of  their  ownership  the 
masters  of  England.  So  true  is  it  that  "to  whomsoever 
the  soil  at  any  time  belongs,  to  him  belong  the  fruits  of 
it.'*  The  white  parasols  and  the  elephants  mad  with 
pride  passed  with  the  grant  of  English  land,  and  the  peo- 
ple at  large  can  never  regain  their  power  until  that  grant 
is  resumed.  What  is  true  of  England,  is  universally 
true. 

It  may  be  said  that  such  a  dead-lock  in  production 
could  never  occur.  This  is  true;  but  true  only  because 
no  such  thorough  combination  of  labor  as  might  produce 
it  is  possible.     But  the  fixed  and  definite  nature  of  land 


Chap.  J.        lUSUFFICIENCY  OF   PEOPOSED   REMEDIES.  313 

enables  land  owners  to  combine  mncli  more  easily  and 
efficiently  than  either  laborers  or  capitalists.  How  easy 
and  efficient  their  combination  is,  there  are  many  his- 
torical examples.  And  the  absolute  necessity  for  the  use 
of  land,  and  the  certainty  in  all  progressive  countries 
that  it  must  increase  in  value,  produce  among  land 
owners,  without  any  formal  combination,  all  the  effects 
that  could  be  produced  by  the  most  rigorous  combination 
among  laborers  or  capitalists.  Deprive  a  laborer  of  op- 
portunity of  employment,  and  he  will  soon  be  anxious  to 
get  work  on  any  terms,  but  when  the  receding  wave  of 
speculation  leaves  nominal  land  values  clearly  above  real 
values,  whoever  has  lived  in  a  growing  country  knows 
with  what  tenacity  land  owners  hold  on. 

And,  besides  these  practical  difficulties  in  the  plan  of 
forcing  by  endurance  an  increase  of  wages,  there  are  in 
such  methods  inherent  disadvantages  which  workingmen 
should  not  blink.  I  speak  without  prejudice,  for  I  am 
still  an  honorary  member  of  the  union  which,  while 
working  at  my  trade,  I  always  loyally  supported.  But, 
see:  The  methods  by  which  a  trade  union  can  alone  act 
are  necessarily  destructive;  its  organization  is  necessarily 
tyrannical.  A  strike,  which  is  the  only  recourse  by 
which  a  trade  union  can  enforce  its  demands,  is  a  de- 
structive contest — just  such  a  contest  as  that  to  which 
an  eccentric,  called  "The  Money  King,"  once,  in  the 
early  days  of  San  Francisco,  challenged  a  man  who 
had  taunted  him  with  meanness,  that  they  should  go 
down  to  the  wharf  and  alternately  toss  twenty-dollar 
pieces  into  the  bay  until  one  gave  in.  The  struggle  of 
endurance  involved  in  a  strike  is,  really,  what  it  has 
often  been  compared  to — a  war;  and,  like  all  war,  it 
lessens  wealth.  And  the  organization  for  it  must,  like 
the  organization  for  war,  be  tyrannical.  As  even  the 
man  who  would  fight  for  freedom,  must,  when  he  enters 
au  army,  give  up  his  personal  freedom  and  become  a 


314  tHE  REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

mere  part  in  a  great  machine,  so  must  it  be  with  work- 
men who  organize  for  a  strike.  These  combinations  are, 
therefore,  necessarily  destructive  of  the  very  things 
which  workmen  seek  to  gain  through  them — wealth  and 
freedom. 

There  is  an  ancient  Hindoo  mode  of  compelling  the 
payment  of  a  just  debt,  traces  of  something  akin  to 
which  Sir  Henry  Maine  has  found  in  the  laws  of  the 
Irish  Brehons.  It  is  called,  sitting  clharna — the  creditor 
seeking  enforcement  of  his  debt  by  sitting  down  at  the 
door  of  the  debtor,  and  refusing  to  eat  or  drink  until  he 
is  paid. 

Like  this  is  the  method  of  labor  combinations.  In 
their  strikes,  trades'  unions  sit  dharna.  But,  unlike  the 
Hindoo,  they  have  not  the  power  of  superstition  to  back 
them. 

IV. — From  Co-operation. 

It  is  now,  and  has  been  for  some  time,  the  fashion  to 
preach  co-operation  as  the  sovereign  remedy  for  the 
grievances  of  the  working  classes.  But,  unfortunately 
for  the  efficacy  of  co-operation  as  a  remedy  for  social 
evils,  these  evils,  as  we  have  seen,  do  not  arise  from  any 
conflict  between  labor  and  capital;  and  if  co-operation 
were  universal,  it  could  not  raise  wages  or  relieve  pov- 
erty.    This  is  readily  seen. 

Co-operation  is  of  two  kinds — co-operation  in  supply 
and  co-operation  in  production.  Now,  co-operation  in 
supply,  let  it  go  as  far  as  it  may  in  excluding  middlemen, 
only  reduces  the  cost  of  exchanges.  It  is  simply  a  device 
to  save  labor  and  eliminate  risk,  and  its  effect  upon  dis- 
tribution can  be  only  that  of  the  improvements  and 
inventions  which  have  in  modern  times  so  wonderfully 
cheapened  and  facilitated  exchanges — viz.,  to  increase 
rent.  And  co-operation  in  production  is  simply  a  rever- 
sion to  that  form  of  wages  which  still  prevails  in  the 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PROPOSED   REMEDIES.  315 

whaling  service,  and  is  there  termed  a  "lay."  It  is  the 
substitution  of  proportionate  wages  for  fixed  wages — a 
substitution  of  which  there  are  occasional  instances  in 
almost  all  employments;  or,  if  the  management  is  left  to 
the  workmen,  and  the  capitalist  but  takes  his  proportion 
of  the  net  produce,  it  is  simply  the  system  that  has  pre- 
vailed to  a  large  extent  in  European  agriculture  since 
the  days  of  the  Eoman  Empire — the  colonial  or  metayer 
system.  All  that  is  claimed  for  co-operation  in  produc- 
tion is,  that  it  makes  the  workman  more  active  and  in- 
dustrious— in  other  words,  that  it  increases  the  efficiency 
of  labor.  Thus  its  effect  is  in  the  same  direction  as  the 
steam  engine,  the  cotton  gin,  the  reaping  machine — in 
short,  all  the  things  in  which  material  progress  consists, 
and  it  can  produce  only  the  same  result — viz.,  the  in- 
crease of  rent. 

It  is  a  striking  proof  of  how  first  principles  are  ignored 
in  dealing  with  social  problems,  that  in  current  economic 
and  semi-economic  literature  so  much  importance  is  at- 
tached to  co-operation  as  a  means  for  increasing  wages 
and  relieving  poverty.  That  it  can  have  no  such  general 
tendency  is  apparent. 

Waiving  all  the  difficulties  that  under  present  condi- 
tions beset  co-operation  either  of  supply  or  of  production, 
and  supposing  it  so  extended  as  to  supplant  present 
methods — that  co-operative  stores  made  the  connection 
between  producer  and  consumer  with  the  minimum  of 
expense,  and  co-operative  workshops,  factories,  farms, 
and  mines,  abolished  the  employing  capitalist  who  pays 
fixed  wages,  and  greatly  increased  the  efficiency  of  labor 
— what  then?  Why,  simply  that  it  would  become  pos- 
sible to  produce  the  same  amount  of  wealth  with  less 
labor,  and  consequently  that  the  owners  of  land,  the 
source  of  all  wealth,  could  command  a  greater  amount  of 
wealth  for  the  use  of  their  land.  This  is  not  a  matter 
of  mere  theory;  it  is  proved  by  experience  and  by  exist- 


316  THE   REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

ing  facts.  Improved  methods  and  improved  machinery 
have  the  same  effect  that  co-operation  aims  at — of  reduc- 
ing the  cost  of  bringing  commodities  to  the  consumer 
and  increasing  the  efficiency  of  labor,  and  it  is  in  these 
respects  that  the  older  countries  have  the  advantage  of 
new  settlements.  But,  as  experience  has  amply  shown, 
improvements  in  the  methods  and  machinery  of  produc- 
tion and  exchange  have  no  tendency  to  improve  the  con- 
dition of  the  lowest  class,  and  wages  are  lower  and  pov- 
erty deeper  where  exchange  goes  on  at  the  minimum  of 
cost  and  production  has  the  benefit  of  the  best  machinery. 
The  advantage  but  adds  to  rent. 

But  suppose  co-operation  between  producers  and  land 
owners?  That  would  simply  amount  to  the  payment  of 
rent  in  kind — the  same  system  under  which  much  land  is 
rented  in  California  and  the  Southern  States  where  the 
land  owner  gets  a  share  of  the  crop.  Save  as  a  matter 
of  computation  it  in  no  wise  differs  from  the  system 
which  prevails  in  England  of  a  fixed  money  rent.  Call 
it  co-operation,  if  you  choose,  the  terms  of  the  co-opera- 
tion would  still  be  fixed  by  the  laws  which  determine 
rent,  and  wherever  land  was  monopolized,  increase  in 
productive  power  would  simply  give  the  owners  of  the 
land  the  power  to  demand  a  larger  share. 

That  co-operation  is  by  so  many  believed  to  be  the  solu- 
tion of  the  "labor  question"  arises  from  the  fact  that, 
where  it  has  been  tried,  it  has  in  many  instances  im- 
proved perceptibly  the  condition  of  those  immediately 
engaged  in  it.  But  this  is  due  simply  to  the  fact  that 
these  cases  are  isolated.  Just  as  industry,  economy,  or 
skill  may  improve  the  condition  of  the  workmen  who 
possess  them  in  superior  degree,  but  cease  to  have  this 
effect  when  improvement  in  these  respects  becomes  gen- 
eral, so  a  special  advantage  in  procuring  supplies,  or  a 
special  efficiency  given  to  some  labor,  may  secure  advan- 
tages which  would  be  lost  as  soon  as  these  improvements 


Chxip.L        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PROPOSED   REMEDIES.  317 

became  so  general  as  to  affect  the  general  relations  of  dis- 
tribution. And  the  truth  is,  that,  save  possibly  in  edu- 
cational effects,  co-operation  can  produce  no  general 
results  that  competition  will  not  produce.  Just  as  the 
cheap-for-cash  stores  have  a  similar  effect  upon  prices  as 
the  co-operative  supply  associations,  so  does  competition 
in  production  lead  to  a  similar  adjustment  of  forces  and 
division  of  proceeds  as  would  co-operative  production. 
That  increasing  productive  power  does  not  add  to  the 
reward  of  labor,  is  not  because  of  competition,  but  be- 
cause competition  is  one-sided.  Land,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  production,  is  monopolized,  and  the 
competition  of  producers  for  its  use  forces  wages  to  a 
minimum  and  gives  all  the  advantage  of  increasing  pro- 
ductive power  to  land  owners,  in  higher  rents  and 
increased  land  values.  Destroy  this  monopoly,  and  com- 
petition could  exist  only  to  accomplish  the  end  which 
co-operation  aims  at — to  give  to  each  what  he  fairly 
earns.  Destroy  this  monopoly,  and  industry  must  be- 
come the  co-operation  of  equals. 

V. — From  Oovernmental  Direction  and  Interference. 

The  limits  within  which  I  wish  to  keep  this  book  will 
not  permit  an  examination  in  detail  of  the  methods  in 
which  it  is  proposed  to  mitigate  or  extirpate  poverty  by 
governmental  regulation  of  industry  and  accumulation, 
and  which  in  their  most  thorough-going  form  are  called 
socialistic.  Nor  is  it  necessary,  for  the  same  defects 
attach  to  them  all.  These  are  the  substitution  of  gov- 
ernmental direction  for  the  play  of  individual  action,  and 
the  attempt  to  secure  by  restriction  what  can  better  be 
secured  by  freedom.  As  to  the  truths  that  are  involved 
in  socialistic  ideas  I  shall  have  something  to  say  here- 
after; but  it  is  evident  that  whatever  savors  of  regulation 
and  restriction  is  in  itself  bad,  and  should  not  be  re- 


318  THE  REXEDT.  Book  VI. 

sorted  to  if  any  other  mode  of  accomplishing  the  same 
end  presents  itself.  For  instance,  to  take  one  of  the 
simplest  and  mildest  of  the  class  of  measures  I  refer  to 
— a  graduated  tax  on  incomes.  The  object  at  which  it 
aims,  the  reduction  or  prevention  of  immense  concen- 
trations of  wealth,  is  good;  but  this  means  involves  the 
employment  of  a  large  number  of  officials  clothed  with 
inquisitorial  powers;  temptations  to  bribery,  and  per- 
jury, and  all  other  means  of  evasion,  which  beget  a 
demoralization  of  opinion,  and  put  a  premium  upon  un- 
scrupulousness  and  a  tax  upon  conscience;  and,  finally, 
just  in  proportion  as  the  tax  accomplishes  its  effect,  a 
lessening  in  the  incentive  to  the  accumulation  of  wealth, 
which  is  one  of  the  strong  forces  of  industrial  progress. 
While,  if  the  elaborate  schemes  for  regulating  every- 
thing and  finding  a  place  for  everybody  could  be  carried 
out,  we  should  have  a  state  of  society  resembling  that  of 
ancient  Peru,  or  that  which,  to  their  eternal  honor,  the 
Jesuits  instituted  and  so  long  maintained  in  Paraguay. 

I  will  not  say  that  such  a  state  as  this  is  not  a  better 
social  state  than  that  to  which  we  now  seem  to  be  tend- 
ing, for  in  ancient  Peru,  though  production  went  on 
under  the  greatest  disadvantages,  from  the  want  of  iron 
and  the  domestic  animals,  yet  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
want,  and  the  people  went  to  their  work  with  songs. 
But  this  it  is  unnecessary  to  discuss.  Socialism  in  any- 
thing approaching  such  a  form,  modern  society  cannot 
successfully  attempt.  The  only  force  that  has  ever 
proved  competent  for  it — a  strong  and  definite  religious 
faith — is  wanting  and  is  daily  growing  less.  We  have 
passed  out  of  the  socialism  of  the  tribal  state,  and  cannot 
re-enter  it  again  except  by  a  retrogression  that  would 
involve  anarchy  and  perhaps  barbarism.  Our  govern- 
ments, as  is  already  plainly  evident,  would  break  down 
in  the  attempt.  Instead  of  an  intelligent  award  of 
duties  and  earnings,  we  should  have  a  Koman  distribu- 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY  OF  PROPOSED  REMEDIES.  319 

tion  of  Sicilian  corn,  and  the  demagogue   would  soon 
become  the  Imperator. 

The  ideal  of  socialism  is  grand  and  noble;  and  it  is,  I 
am  convinced,  possible  of  realization;  but  such  a  state 
of  society  cannot  be  manufactured — it  must  grow.  Soci- 
ety is  an  organism,  not  a  machine.  It  can  live  only  by 
the  individual  life  of  its  parts.  And  in  the  free  and  nat- 
ural development  of  all  the  parts  will  be  secured  the 
harmony  of  the  whole.  All  that  is  necessary  to  social 
regeneration  is  included  in  the  motto  of  those  Kussian 
patriots  sometimes  called  Nihilists — *'Land  and  Liberty!" 

VT. — From  a  More  General  Distribution  of  Land. 

There  is  a  rapidly  growing  feeling  that  the  tenure  of 
land  is  in  some  manner  connected  with  the  social  dis- 
tress which  manifests  itself  in  the  most  progressive 
countries;  but  this  feeling  as  yet  mostly  shows  itself  in 
propositions  which  look  to  the  more  general  division  of 
landed  property — in  England,  free  trade  in  land,  tenant 
right,  or  the  equal  partition  of  landed  estates  among 
heirs;  in  the  United  States,  restrictions  upon  the  size  of 
individual  holdings.  It  has  been  also  proposed  in  Eng- 
land that  the  state  should  buy  out  the  landlords,  and  in 
the  United  States  that  grants  of  money  should  be  made 
to  enable  the  settlements  of  colonies  upon  public  lands. 
The  former  proposition  let  us  pass  for  the  present;  the 
latter,  so  far  as  its  distinctive  feature  is  concerned,  falls 
into  the  category  of  the  measures  considered  in  the  last 
section.  It  needs  no  argument  to  show  to  what  abuses 
and  demoralization  grants  of  public  money  or  credit 
would  lead. 

How  what  the  English  writers  call  "free  trade  in  land'* 
— the  removal  of  duties  and  restrictions  upon  convey- 
ances— could  facilitate  the  division  of  ownership  in  agri- 
cultural land,  I  cannot  see,  though  it  might  to  some 


330  THE  KEMEDY.  Book  VI. 

extent  have  that  effect  as  regards  town  property.  The 
removal  of  restrictions  upon  buying  and  selling  would 
merely  permit  the  ownership  of  land  to  assume  more 
quickly  the  form  to  which  it  tends.  Now,  that  the  tend- 
ency in  Great  Britain  is  to  concentration  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that,  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  interposed  by  the 
cost  of  transfer,  land  ownership  has  been  and  is  steadily 
concentrating  there,  and  that  this  tendency  is  a  general 
one  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  same  process  of  con- 
centration is  observable  in  the  United  States.  I  say 
this  unhesitatingly  in  regard  to  the  United  States,  al- 
though statistical  tables  are  sometimes  quoted  to  show  a 
different  tendency.  But  how,  in  such  a  country  as  the 
United  States,  the  ownership  of  land  may  be  really  con- 
centrating, while  census  tables  show  rather  a  diminution 
in  the  average  size  of  holdings,  is  readily  seen.  As  land 
is  brought  into  use,  and,  with  the  growth  of  population, 
passes  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  or  intenser  use,  the  size 
of  holdings  tends  to  diminish.  A  small  stock  range 
would  be  a  large  farm,  a  small  farm  would  be  a  large 
orchard,  vineyard,  nursery,  or  vegetable  garden,  and  a 
patch  of  land  which  would  be  small  even  for  these  pur- 
poses would  make  a  very  large  city  property.  Thus, 
the  growth  of  population,  which  puts  land  to  higher  or 
intenser  uses,  tends  naturally  to  reduce  the  size  of  hold- 
ings, by  a  process  very  marked  in  new  countries;  but 
with  this  may  go  on  a  tendency  to  the  concentration  of 
land  ownership,  which,  though  not  revealed  by  tables 
which  show  the  average  size  of  holdings,  is  just  as  clearly 
seen.  Average  holdings  of  one  acre  in  a  city  may  show  a 
much  greater  concentration  of  land  ownership  than  aver- 
age holdings  of  640  acres  in  a  newly  settled  township.  I 
refer  to  this  to  show  the  fallacy  in  the  deductions  drawn 
from  the  tables  which  are  frequently  paraded  in  the 
United  States  to  show  that  land  monopoly  is  an  evil  that 
will  cure  itself.     On  the  contrary,  it  is  obvious  that  the 


CtMp.I.        INSUFFICIENCY   OF  PROPOSED   REMEDIES.  321 

proportion  of  land  owners  to  the  whole  population  is 
constantly  decreasing. 

And  that  there  is  in  the  United  States,  as  there  is  in 
Great  Britain,  a  strong  tendency  to  the  concentration  of 
land  ownership  in  agriculture  is  clearly  seen.  As,  in 
England  and  Ireland,  small  farms  are  being  thrown  into 
larger  ones,  so  in  New  England,  according  to  the  reports 
of  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  is  the 
size  of  farms  increasing.  This  tendency  is  even  more 
clearly  noticeable  in  the  newer  States  and  Territories. 
Only  a  few  years  ago  a  farm  of  320  acres  would,  under 
the  system  of  agriculture  prevailing  in  the  northern 
parts  of  the  Union,  have  anywhere  been  a  large  one, 
probably  as  much  as  one  man  could  cultivate  to  advan- 
tage. In  California  now  there  are  farms  (not  cattle 
ranges)  of  five,  ten,  twenty,  forty  and  sixty  thousand 
acres,  while  the  model  farm  of  Dakota  embraces  100,000 
acres.  The  reason  is  obvious.  It  is  the  application  of 
machinery  to  agriculture  and  the  general  tendency  to 
production  on  a  large  scale.  The  same  tendency  which 
substitutes  the  factory,  with  its  army  of  operatives,  for 
many  independent  hand-loom  weavers,  is  beginning  to 
exhibit  itself  in  agriculture. 

Now,  the  existence  of  this  tendency  shows  two  things: 
first,  that  any  measures  which  merely  permit  or  facilitate 
the  greater  subdivision  of  land  would  be  inoperative; 
and,  second,  that  any  measures  which  would  compel  it 
would  have  a  tendency  to  check  production.  If  land  in 
large  bodies  can  be  cultivated  more  cheaply  than  land  in 
small  bodies,  to  restrict  ownership  to  small  bodies  will 
reduce  the  aggregate  production  of  wealth,  and,  in  so 
far  as  such  restrictions  are  imposed  and  take  effect,  will 
they  tend  to  diminish  the  general  productiveness  of  labor 
and  capital. 

The  effort,  therefore,  to  secure  a  fairer  division  of 
wealth  by  such  restrictions  is  liable  to  the  drawback  of 


323  THE   REMEDY.  Book  VI. 

lessening  the  amount  to  be  divided.  The  device  is  like 
that  of  the  monkey,  who,  dividing  the  cheese  between 
the  cats,  equalized  matters  by  taking  a  bite  off  the  biggest 
piece. 

But  there  is  not  merely  this  objection,  which  weighs 
against  every  proposition  to  restrict  the  ownership  of 
land,  with  a  force  that  increases  with  the  eflBciency  of 
the  proposed  measure.  There  is  the  further  and  fatal 
objection  that  restriction  will  not  secure  the  end  which 
is  alone  worth  aiming  at — a  fair  division  of  the  produce. 
It  will  not  reduce  rent,  and  therefore  cannot  increase 
wages.  It  may  make  the  comfortable  classes  larger,  but 
will  not  improve  the  condition  of  those  in  the  lowest 
class. 

If  what  is  known  as  the  Ulster  tenant  right  were  ex- 
tended to  the  whole  of  Great  Britain,  it  would  be  but  to 
carve  out  of  the  estate  of  the  landlord  an  estate  for  the 
tenant.  The  condition  of  the  laborer  would  not  be  a 
whit  improved.  If  landlords  were  prohibited  from  ask- 
ing an  increase  of  rent  from  their  tenants  and  from 
ejecting  a  tenant  so  long  as  the  fixed  rent  was  paid,  the 
body  of  the  producers  would  gain  nothing.  Economic 
rent  would  still  increase,  and  would  still  steadily  lessen 
the  proportion  of  the  produce  going  to  labor  and  capital. 
The  only  difference  would  be  that  the  tenants  of  the  first 
landlords,  who  would  become  landlords  in  their  turn, 
would  profit  by  the  increase. 

If  by  a  restriction  upon  the  amount  of  land  any  one 
individual  might  hold,  by  the  regulation  of  devises  and 
successions,  or  by  cumulative  taxation,  the  few  thousand 
land  holders  of  Great  Britain  should  be  increased  by  two 
or  three  million,  these  two  or  three  million  people  would 
be  gainers.  But  the  rest  of  the  population  would  gain 
nothing.  They  would  have  no  more  share  in  the  ad- 
vantages of  land  ownership  than  before.  And  if,  what 
is  manifestly  impossible,  a  fair  distribution  of  the  land 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIENCY   OF   PROPOSED   EEMEDIES.  323 

were  made  among  the  whole  population,  giving  to  each 
his  equal  share,  and  laws  enacted  which  would  interpose 
a  barrier  to  the  tendency  to  concentration  by  forbidding 
the  holding  by  any  one  of  more  than  the  fixed  amount, 
what  would  become  of  the  increase  of  population? 

Just  what  may  be  accomplished  by  the  greater  division 
of  land  may  be  seen  in  those  districts  of  France  and 
Belgium  where  minute  division  prevails.  That  such  a 
division  of  land  is  on  the  whole  much  better,  and  that  it 
gives  a  far  more  stable  basis  to  the  state  than  that  which 
prevails  in  England,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  But  that  it 
does  not  make  wages  any  higher  or  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  the  class  who  have  only  their  labor,  is  equally 
clear.  These  French  and  Belgian  peasants  practice  a 
rigid  economy  unknown  to  any  of  the  English-speaking 
peoples.  And  if  such  striking  symptoms  of  the  poverty 
and  distress  of  the  lowest  class  are  not  apparent  as  on 
the  other  side  of  the  channel,  it  must,  I  think,  be  at- 
tributed, not  only  to  this  fact,  but  to  another  fact,  which 
accounts  for  the  continuance  of  the  minute  division  of 
the  land — that  material  progress  has  not  been  so  rapid. 

Neither  has  population  increased  with  the  same  rapid- 
ity (on  the  contrary  it  has  been  nearly  stationary),  nor 
have  improvements  in  the  modes  of  production  been  so 
great.  Nevertheless,  M.  de  Laveleye,  all  of  whose  pre- 
possessions are  in  favor  of  small  holdings,  and  whose 
testimony  will  therefore  carry  more  weight  than  that  of 
English  observers,  who  may  be  supposed  to  harbor  a 
prejudice  for  the  system  of  their  own  country,  states  in 
his  paper  on  the  Land  Systems  of  Belgium  and  Holland, 
printed  by  the  Cobden  Club,  that  the  condition  of  the 
laborer  is  worse  under  this  system  of  the  minute  division 
of  land  than  it  is  in  England;  while  the  tenant  farmers 
— for  tenancy  largely  prevails  even  where  the  morcell- 
ment  is  greatest — are  rack-rented  with  a  mercilessness 
unknown  in  England,  and  even   in  Ireland,  and   the 


324  THE  BEMEDY.  Book  VI. 

franchise  "so  far  from  raising  them  in  the  social  scale, 
is  but  a  source  of  mortification  and  humiliation  to  them, 
for  they  are  forced  to  vote  according  to  the  dictates  of 
the  landlord  instead  of  following  the  dictates  of  their 
own  inclination  and  convictions." 

But  while  the  subdivision  of  land  can  thus  do  nothing 
to  cure  the  evils  of  land  monopoly,  while  it  can  have  no 
effect  in  raising  wages  or  in  improving  the  condition  of 
the  lowest  classes,  its  tendency  is  to  prevent  the  adop- 
tion or  even  advocacy  of  more  thorough-going  measures, 
and  to  strengthen  the  existing  unjust  system  by  interest- 
ing a  larger  number  in  its  maintenance.  M.  de  Laveleye, 
in  concluding  the  paper  from  which  I  have  quoted, 
urges  the  greater  division  of  land  as  the  surest  means  of 
securing  the  great  land  owners  of  England  from  some- 
thing far  more  radical.  Although  in  the  districts  where 
land  is  so  minutely  divided,  the  condition  of  the  laborer 
is,  he  states,  the  worst  in  Europe  and  the  renting 
farmer  is  much  more  ground  down  by  his  landlord  than 
the  Irish  tenant,  yet  "feelings  hostile  to  social  order,'* 
M.  de  Laveleye  goes  on  to  say,  "do  not  manifest  them- 
selves," because — 

"The  tenant,  although  ground  down  by  the  constant  rise  of  rents, 
lives  among  his  equals,  peasants  like  himself  who  have  tenants  whom 
they  use  just  as  the  large  land  holder  does  his.  His  father,  his 
brother,  perhaps  the  man  himself,  possesses  something  like  an  acre 
of  land,  which  he  lets  at  as  high  a  rent  as  he  can  get.  In  the  public 
house  peasant  proprietors  will  boast  of  the  high  rents  they  get  for 
their  lands,  just  as  they  might  boast  of  having  sold  their  pigs  or  po- 
tatoes very  dear.  Letting  at  as  high  a  rent  as  possible  comes  thus  to 
seem  to  him  to  be  quite  a  matter  of  course,  and  he  never  dreams  of 
finding  fault  with  either  the  land  owners  as  a  class  or  with  property 
in  land.  His  mind  is  not  likely  to  dwell  on  the  notion  of  a  caste  of 
domineering  landlords,  of  "bloodthirsty  tyrants,"  fattening  on  the 
sweat  of  impoverished  tenants  and  doing  no  work  themselves;  for 
those  who  drive  the  hardest  bargains  are  not  the  great  land  owners 
but  his  own  fellows.  Thus,  the  distribution  of  a  number  of  small 
properties  among  the  peasantry  forms  a  kind  of  rampart  and  safe- 


Chap.  I.        INSUFFICIElirCY   OF   PROPOSED  EEMEDIES.  325 

guard  for  the  holders  of  large  estates,  and  peasant  property  may 
■without  exaggeration  be  called  the  lightning  conductor  that  averts 
from  society  dangers  which  might  otherwise  lead  to  violent  catas- 
trophes. 

"The  concentration  of  land  in  large  estates  among  a  small  num- 
ber of  families  is  a  sort  of  provocation  of  leveling  legislation.  The 
position  of  England,  so  enviable  in  many  respects,  seems  to  me  to  be 
in  this  respect  full  of  danger  for  the  future." 

To  me,  for  the  very  same  reason  that  M.  de  Laveleye 
expresses,  the  position  of  England  seems  full  of  hope. 

Let  us  abandon  all  attempt  to  get  rid  of  the  evils  of 
land  monopoly  by  restricting  land  ownership.  An  equal 
distribution  of  land  is  impossible,  and  anything  short  of 
that  would  be  only  a  mitigation,  not  a  cure,  and  a  mitiga- 
tion that  would  prevent  the  adoption  of  a  cure.  Nor  is 
any  remedy  worth  considering  that  does  not  fall  in  with 
the  natural  direction  of  social  development,  and  swim, 
so  to  speak,  with  the  current  of  the  times.  That  con- 
centration is  the  order  of  development  there  can  be  no 
mistaking — the  concentration  of  people  in  large  cities, 
the  concentration  of  handicrafts  in  large  factories,  the 
concentration  of  transportation  by  railroad  and  steam- 
ship lines,  and  of  agricultural  operations  in  large  fields. 
The  most  trivial  businesses  are  being  concentrated  in  the 
same  way — errands  are  run  and  carpet  sacks  are  carried 
by  corporations.  All  the  currents  of  the  time  run  to 
concentration.  To  resist  it  successfully  we  must  throt- 
tle steam  and  discharge  electricity  from  human  service. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  TRUE   REMEDY. 

We  have  traced  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth 
which  is  the  curse  and  menace  of  modern  civilization  to 
the  institution  of  private  property  in  land.  We  have 
seen  that  so  long  as  this  institution  exists  no  increase  in 
productive  power  can  permanently  benefit  the  masses; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  must  tend  still  further  to  depress 
their  condition.  We  have  examined  all  the  remedies, 
short  of  the  abolition  of  private  property  in  land,  which 
are  currently  relied  on  or  proposed  for  the  relief  of  pov- 
erty and  the  better  distribution  of  wealth,  and  have 
found  them  all  ineflBcacious  or  impracticable. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  remove  an  evil— :and  that  is, 
to  remove  its  cause.  Poverty  deepens  as  wealth  in- 
creases, and  wages  are  forced  down  while  productive 
power  grows,  because  land,  which  is  the  source  of  all 
wealth  and  the  field  of  all  labor,  is  monopolized.  To  ex- 
tirpate poverty,  to  make  wages  what  justice  commands 
they  should  be,  the  full  earnings  of  the  laborer,  we  must 
therefore  substitute  for  the  individual  ownership  of  land 
a  common  ownership.  Nothing  else  will  go  to  the 
cause  of  the  evil — in  nothing  else  is  there  the  slightest 
hope. 

This,  then,  is  the  remedy  for  the  unjust  and  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth  apparent  in  modem  civilization, 
and  for  all  the  evils  which  flow  from  it: 

We  must  make  land  common  property. 

We  have  reached  this  conclusion  by  an  examination  in 


Chap.n.  THE  TRUE   REMEDY.  327 

which  every  step  has  been  proved  and  secured.  In  the 
chain  of  reasoning  no  link  is  wanting  and  no  link  is 
weak.  Dedaction  and  induction  have  brought  ns  to  the 
same  truth — that  the  unequal  ownership  of  land  neces- 
sitates the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth.  And  as  in 
the  nature  of  things  unequal  ownership  of  land  is  in- 
separable from  the  recognition  of  individual  property  in 
land,  it  necessarily  follows  that  the  only  remedy  for  the 
unjust  distribution  of  wealth  is  in  making  land  common 
property. 

But  this  is  a  truth  which,  in  the  present  state  of  so- 
ciety, will  arouse  the  most  bitter  antagonism,  and  must 
fight  its  way,  inch  by  inch.  It  will  be  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  meet  the  objections  of  those  who,  even  when 
driven  to  admit  this  truth,  wiU  declare  that  it  cannot  be 
practically  applied. 

In  doing  this  we  shall  bring  our  previous  reasoning  to 
a  new  and  crucial  test.  Just  as  we  try  addition  by  sub- 
traction and  multiplication  by  division,  so  may  we,  by 
testing  the  sufl5ciency  of  the  remedy,  prove  the  correct- 
ness of  our  conclusions  as  to  the  cause  of  the  evil. 

The  laws  of  the  universe  are  harmonious.  And  if  the 
remedy  to  which  we  have  been  led  is  the  true  one,  it 
must  be  consistent  with  justice;  it  must  be  practicable 
of  application;  it  must  accord  with  the  tendencies  of 
social  development  and  must  harmonize  with  other 
reforms. 

All  this  I  propose  to  show.  I  propose  to  meet  all 
practical  objections  that  can  be  raised,  and  to  show  that 
this  simple  measure  is  not  only  easy  of  application;  but 
that  it  is  a  suflBcient  remedy  for  aU  the  evils  which,  as 
modern  progress  goes  on,  arise  from  the  greater  and 
greater  inequality  in  the  distribution  of  we^th — that  it 
will  substitute  equality  for  inequality,  plenty  for  want, 
justice  for  injustice,  social  strength  for  social  weakness, 
and  will  open  the  way  to  grander  and  nobler  advances  of 
civilization. 


328  THE   REMEDY.  .  Book  VI. 

I  thus  propose  to  show  that  the  laws  of  the  universe  do 
not  deny  the  natural  aspirations  of  the  human  heart; 
that  the  progress  of  society  might  be,  and,  if  it  is  to  con- 
tinue, must  be,  toward  equality,  not  toward  inequality; 
and  that  the  economic  harmonies  prove  the  truth  per- 
ceived by  the  Stoic  Emperor — 

^'We  are  made  for  co-operation — like  feet,  like  hands, 
like  eyelids,  like  the  rows  of  the  upper  and  lower  teeth." 


BOOK  VIL 

JUSTICE  OF  THE  KEMEDY. 


CHAPTER       I. — INJUSTICE  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IK  LAND. 

CHAPTER  II. — ENSLAVEMENT  OF  LABORERS  THE  ULTI- 
MATE RESULT  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY 
IN  LAND. 

CHAPTER  III. — CLAIM  OF  LAND  OWNERS  TO  COMPENSA- 
TION. 

CHAPTER  IV. — PROPERTY  IN  LAND  HISTORICALLY  CON- 
SIDERED. 

CHAPTER  V. — PROPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED 
STATES. 


Justice  is  a  relation  of  congruity  which  really  subsists  between 
two  things.  This  relation  is  always  the  same,  whatever  being  con- 
siders it,  whether  it  be  God,  or  an  angel,  or  lastly  a  man. — Montesquieu. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  INJUSTICE  OF  PEIVATE  PROPEBTY  IN  LAND. 

When  it  is  proposed  to  abolish  private  property  in  land 
the  first  question  that  will  arise  is  that  of  justice. 
Though  often  warped  by  habit,  superstition,  and  self- 
ishness into  the  most  distorted  forms,  the  sentiment  of 
justice  is  yet  fundamental  to  the  human  mind,  and 
whatever  dispute  arouses  the  passions  of  men,  the  con- 
flict is  sure  to  rage,  not  so  much  as  to  the  question  "Is  it 
wise?"  as  to  the  question  "Is  it  right?" 

This  tendency  of  popular  discussions  to  take  an  ethical    \. 
form  has  a  cause.     It  springs  from  a  law  of  the  human      j 
mind;  it  rests  upon  a  vague  and  instinctive  recognition     / 
of  what    is  probably  the  deepest  truth  we  can  grasp,      y 
That  alone  is  wise  which  is  just;  that  alone  is  enduring  f 
which  is  right.     In  the  narrow  scale  of  individual  actions  1 
and  individual  life  this  truth  may  be  often  obscured,  but  / 
in  the  wider  field  of  national  life  it  everywhere  stands^ 
out. 

I  bow  to  this  arbitrament,  and  accept  this  test.  If 
our  inquiry  into  the  cause  which  makes  low  wages  and 
pauperism  the  accompaniments  of  material  progress  has 
led  us  to  a  correct  conclusion,  it  will  bear  translation 
from  terms  of  political  economy  into  terms  of  ethics,  and 
as  the  source  of  social  evils  show  a  wrong.  If  it  will  not 
do  this,  it  is  disproved.  If  it  will  do  this,  it  is  proved 
by  the  final  decision.  If  private  property  in  land  be 
just,  then  is  the  remedy  I  propose  a  false  one;  if,  on  the 
contrary,  private  property  in  land  be  unjust,  then  is  this 
remedy  the  true  one. 


332  JUSTICE  OF  THE   EEMEDY.  Book  VII. 

What  constitutes  the  rightful  basis  of  property?  What 
is  it  that  enables  a  man  justly  to  say  of  a  thing,  "It  is 
mine?"  From  what  springs  the  sentiment  which  ac- 
knowledges his  exclusive  right  as  against  all  the  world? 
Is  it  not,  primarily,  the  right  of  a  man  to  himself  to  the 
use  of  his  own  powers,  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  fruits  of 
his  own  exertions?  Is  it  not  this  individual  right,  which 
springs  from  and  is  testified  to  by  the  natural  facts  of  in- 
dividual organization — the  fact  that  each  particular  pair 
of  hands  obey  a  particular  brain  and  are  related  to  a  par- 
ticular stomach;  the  fact  that  each  man  is  a  definite, 
coherent,  independent  whole — which  alone  justifies  indi- 
vidual ownership?  As  a  man  belongs  to  himself,  so  his 
labor  when  put  in  concrete  form  belongs  to  him. 

And  for  this  reason,  that  which  a  man  makes  or  pro- 
duces is  his  own,  as  against  all  the  world — to  enjoy  or  to 
destroy,  to  use,  to  exchange,  or  to  give.  No  one  else 
can  rightfully  claim  it,  and  his  exclusive  right  to  it  in- 
volves no  wrong  to  any  one  else.  Thus  there  is  to  every- 
thing produced  by  human  exertion  a  clear  and  indis- 
putable title  to  exclusive  possession  and  enjoyment, 
which  is  perfectly  consistent  with  justice,  as  it  descends 
from  the  original  producer,  in  whom  it  vested  by  natural 
law.  The  pen  with  which  I  am  writing  is  justly  mine. 
No  other  human  being  can  rightfully  lay  claim  to  it,  for 
in  me  is  the  title  of  the  producers  who  made  it.  It  has 
become  mine,  because  transferred  to  me  by  the  stationer, 
to  whom  it  was  transferred  by  the  importer,  who  ob- 
tained the  exclusive  right  to  it  by  transfer  from  the  man- 
ufacturer, in  whom,  by  the  same  process  of  purchase, 
vested  the  rights  of  those  who  dug  the  material  from 
the  ground  and  shaped  it  into  a  pen.  Thus,  my  ex- 
clusive right  of  ownership  in  the  pen  springs  from  the 
natural  right  of  the  individual  to  the  use  of  his  own 
faculties. 
Now,  this  is  not  only  the  original  source  from  which 


Chap.  I.      INJUSTICE  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IX  LAND.  333 

all  ideas  of  exclusive  ownership  arise — as  is  evident  from 
the  natural  tendency  of  the  mind  to  revert  to  it  when 
the  idea  of  exclusive  ownership  is  questioned,  and  the 
manner  in  which  social  relations  develop — but  it  is  neces- 
sarily the  only  source.  There  can  be  to  the  ownership 
of  anything  no  rightful  title  which  is  not  derived  from 
the  title  of  the  producer  and  does  not  rest  upon  the 
natural  right  of  the  man  to  himself.  There  can  be  no 
other  rightful  title,  because  (1st)  there  is  no  other 
natural  right  from  which  any  other  title  can  be  derived, 
and  (2d)  because  the  recognition  of  any  other  title  is  in- 
consistent with  and  destructive  of  this. 

For  (1st)  what  other  right  exists  from  which  the  right 
to  the  exclusive  possession  of  anything  can  be  derived, 
save  the  right  of  a  man  to  himself?  With  what  other 
power  is  man  by  nature  clothed,  save  the  power  of  exert- 
ing his  own  faculties?  How  can  he  in  any  other  way  act 
upon  or  affect  material  things  or  other  men?  Paralyze 
the  motor  nerves,  and  your  man  has  no  more  external 
influence  or  power  than  a  log  or  stone.  From  what  else, 
then,  can  the  right  of  possessing  and  controlling  things 
be  derived?  If  it  spring  not  from  man  himself,  from 
what  can  it  spring?  Nature  acknowledges  no  ownership 
or  control  in  man  save  as  the  result  of  exertion.  In  no 
other  way  can  her  treasures  be  drawn  forth,  her  powers 
directed,  or  her  forces  utilized  or  controlled.  She  makes 
no  discriminations  among  men,  but  is  to  all  absolutely 
impartial.  She  knows  no  distinction  between  master 
and  slave,  king  and  subject,  saint  and  sinner.  All  men 
to  her  stand  upon  an  equal  footing  and  have  equal 
rights.  She  recognizes  no  claim  but  that  of  labor,  and 
recognizes  that  without  respect  to  the  claimant.  If  a 
pirate  spread  his  sails,  the  wind  will  fill  them  as  well  as  it 
will  fill  those  of  a  peaceful  merchantman  or  missionary 
bark;  if  a  king  and  a  common  man  be  thrown  overboard, 
neither  can  keep  his  head  above  water  except  by  swim- 


334  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VII. 

ming;  birds  will  not  come  to  be  shot  by  the  proprietor  of 
the  soil  any  quicker  than  they  will  come  to  be  shot  by 
the  poacher;  fish  will  bite  or  will  not  bite  at  a  hook  in 
utter  disregard  as  to  whether  it  is  offered  them  by  a  good 
little  boy  who  goes  to  Sunday-school,  or  a  bad  little  boy 
who  plays  truant;  grain  will  grow  only  as  the  ground  is 
prepared  and  the  seed  is  sown;  it  is  only  at  the  call  of 
labor  that  ore  can  be  raised  from  the  mine;  the  sun 
shines  and  the  rain  falls,  alike  upon  just  and  unjust. 
The  laws  of  nature  are  the  decrees  of  the  Creator. 
There  is  written  in  them  no  recognition  of  any  right  save 
that  of  labor;  and  in  them  is  written  broadly  and  clearly 
the  equal  right  of  all  men  to  the  use  and  enjoyment  of 
nature;  to  apply  to  her  by  their  exertions,  and  to  receive 
and  possess  her  reward.  Hence,  as  nature  gives  only  to 
labor,  the  exertion  of  labor  in  production  is  the  only 
title  to  exclusive  possession. 

2d.  This  right  of  ownership  that  springs  from  labor 
excludes  the  possibility  of  any  other  right  of  ownership. 
If  a  man  be  rightfully  entitled  to  the  produce  of  his  labor, 
then  no  one  can  be  rightfully  entitled  to  the  ownership 
of  anything  which  is  not  the  produce  of  his  labor,  or  the 
labor  of  some  one  else  from  whom  the  right  has  passed 
to  him.  If  production  give  to  the  producer  the  right  to 
exclusive  possession  and  enjoyment,  there  can  rightfully 
be  no  exclusive  possession  and  enjoyment  of  anything 
not  the  production  of  labor,  and  the  recognition  of  pri- 
vate property  in  land  is  a  wrong.  For  the  right  to  the 
produce  of  labor  cannot  be  enjoyed  without  the  right  to 
the  free  use  of  the  opportunities  offered  by  nature,  and 
to  admit  the  right  of  property  in  these  is  to  deny  the 
right  of  property  in  the  produce  of  labor.  When  non- 
producers  can  claim  as  rent  a  portion  of  the  wealth 
created  by  producers,  the  right  of  the  producers  to  the 
fruits  of  their  labor  is  to  that  extent  denied. 

There  is  no  escape  from  this  position.     To  affirm  that 


Chap.  1.      IKJUSTICE  OF  PEIVATE  PKOPEBTY  IN  LAND.        335 

a  man  can  rightfully  claim  exclusive  ownership  in  his 
own  labor  when  embodied  in  material  things,  is  to  deny 
that  any  one  can  rightfully  claim  exclusive  ownership  in 
land.  To  aflBrm  the  rightfulness  of  property  in  land,  is  to 
aflBrm  a  claim  which  has  no  warrant  in  nature,  as  against 
a  claim  founded  in  the  organization  of  man  and  the  laws 
of  the  material  universe. 

What  most  prevents  the  realization  of  the  injustice  of 
private  property  in  land  is  the  habit  of  including  all  the 
things  that  are  made  the  subject  of  ownership  in  one 
category,  as  property,  or,  if  any  distinction  is  made, 
drawing  the  line,  according  to  the  unphilosophical  dis- 
tinction of  the  lawyers,  between  personal  property  and 
real  estate,  or  things  movable  and  things  immovable. 
The  real  and  natural  distinction  is  between  things  which 
are  the  produce  of  labor  and  things  which  are  the  gratu- 
itous offerings  of  nature;  or,  to  adopt  the  terrms  of  polit- 
ical economy,  between  wealth  and  land. 

These  two  classes  of  things  are  in  essence  and  relations 
widely  different,  and  to  class  them  together  as  property 
is  to  confuse  all  thought  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
justice  or  the  injustice,  the  right  or  the  wrong  of  prop- 
erty. 

A  house  and  the  lot  on  which  it  stands  are  alike  prop- 
erty, as  being  the  subject  of  ownership,  and  are  alike 
classed  by  the  lawyers  as  real  estate.  Yet  in  nature  and 
relations  they  differ  widely.  The  one  is  produced  by 
human  labor,  and  belongs  to  the  class  in  political  econ- 
omy styled  wealth.  The  other  is  a  part  of  nature,  and 
belongs  to  the  class  in  political  economy  styled  land. 

The  essential  character  of  the  one  class  of  things  is 
that  they  embody  labor,  are  brought  into  being  by 
human  exertion,  their  existence  or  non-existence,  their 
increase  or  diminution,  depending  on  man.  The  essential 
character  of  the  other  class  of  things  is  that  they  do  not 
embody  labor,  and  exist  irrespective  of  human  exertion 


336  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VII. 

and  irrespective  of  man;  they  are  the  field  or  environ- 
ment in  which  man  finds  himself;  the  storehouse  from 
which  his  needs  must  be  supplied,  the  raw  material  upon 
which,  and  the  forces  with  which  alone  his  labor  can  act. 

The  moment  this  distinction  is  realized,  that  moment 
is  it  seen  that  the  sanction  which  natural  justice  gives  to 
one  species  of  property  is  denied  to  the  other;  that  the 
rightfulness  which  attaches  to  individual  porperty  in  the 
produce  of  labor  implies  the  wrongfulness  of  individual 
property  in  land;  that,  whereas  the  recognition  of  the 
one  places  all  men  upon  equal  terms,  securing  to  each 
the  due  reward  of  his  labor,  the  recognition  of  the  other 
is  the  denial  of  the  equal  rights  of  men,  permitting  those 
who  do  not  labor  to  take  the  natural  reward  of  those 
who  do. 

Whatever  may  be  said  for  the  institution  of  private 
property  in  land,  it  is  therefore  plain  that  it  cannot  be 
defended  on  the  score  of  justice. 

The  equal  right  of  all  men  to  the  use  of  land  is  as 
clear  as  their  equal  right  to  breathe  the  air — it  is  a  right 
proclaimed  by  the  fact  of  their  existence.  For  we  cannot 
suppose  that  some  men  have  a  right  to  be  in  this  world 
and  others  no  right. 

If  we  are  all  here  by  the  equal  permission  of  the  Crea- 
tor, we  are  all  here  with  an  equal  title  to  the  enjoyment 
of  his  bounty — with  an  equal  right  to  the  use  of  all  that 
nature  so  impartially  offers.*     This  is  a  right  which  is 

*  In  saying  that  private  property  in  land  can,  in  the  ultimate  an- 
alysis, be  justified  only  on  the  theory  that  some  men  have  a  better 
right  to  existence  than  others,  I  am  stating  only  what  the  advocates 
of  the  existing  system  have  themselves  perceived.  What  gave  to 
Malthus  his  popularity  among  the  ruling  classes — what  caused  his 
illogical  book  to  be  received  as  a  new  revelation,  induced  sovereigns 
to  send  him  decorations,  and  the  meanest  rich  man  in  England  to 
propose  to  give  him  a  living,  was  the  fact  that  he  furnished  a  plans- 


ChatK  1.     INJUSTICE  OF  PRIVATE  PEOPEETT  IN  LAND.         337 

natural  and  inalienable;  it  is  a  right  which  vests  in  every 
human  being  as  he  enters  the  world,  and  which  during 
his  continuance  in  the  world  can  be  limited  only  by  the 
equal  rights  of  others.  There  is  in  nature  no  such  thing 
as  a  fee  simple  in  land.  There  is  on  earth  no  power 
which  can  rightfully  make  a  grant  of  exclusive  owner- 
ship in  land.  If  all  existing  men  were  to  unite  to  grant 
away  their  equal  rights,  they  could  not  grant  away  the 
right  of  those  who  follow  them.  For  what  are  we  but 
tenants  for  a  day?  Have  we  made  the  earth,  that  we 
should  determine  the  rights  of  those  who  after  us  shall 
tenant  it  in  their  turn?  The  Almighty,  who  created  the 
earth  for  man  and  man  for  the  earth,  has  entailed  it  upon 
all  the  generations  of  the  children  of  men  by  a  decree 
written  upon  the  constitution  of  all  things — a  decree 
which  no  human  action  can  bar  and  no  prescription  de- 
termine. Let  the  parchments  be  ever  so  many,  or  pos- 
session ever  so  long,  natural  justice  can  recognize  no 
right  in  one  man  to  the  possession  and  enjoyment  of  land 
that  is  not  equally  the  right  of  all  his  fellows.  Though 
his  titles  have  been  acquiesced  in  by  generation  after 
generation,  to  the  landed  estates  of  the  Duke  of  West- 
minster the  poorest  child  that  is  born  in  London  to-day 

ible  reason  for  the  assumption  that  some  have  a  better  right  to  ex- 
istence than  others — an  assumption  which  is  necessary  for  the  justi- 
fication of  private  property  in  land,  and  which  Malthns  clearly  states 
in  the  declaration  that  the  tendency  of  population  is  constantly  to 
bring  into  the  world  human  beings  for  whom  nature  refuses  to  pro- 
vide, and  who  consequently  ' '  have  not  the  slightest  right  to  any  share 
in  the  existing  store  of  the  necessaries  of  life;"  whom  she  tells  as  in- 
terlopers to  begone,  "and  does  not  hesitate  to  extort  by  force  obedi- 
ence to  her  mandates,"  employing  for  that  purpose  "hunger  and 
pestilence,  war  and  crime,  mortality  and  neglect  of  infantine  life, 
prostitution  and  syphilis."  And  to-day  this  Malthusian  doctrine  is 
the  ultimate  defense  upon  which  those  who  justify  private  property 
in  land  fall  back.    In  no  other  way  can  it  be  logically  defended. 


338  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BEMEDY.  Book  VII. 

has  as  much  right  as  has  his  eldest  son.*  Though  the 
sovereign  people  of  the  State  of  New  York  consent  to  the 
landed  possessions  of  the  Astors,  the  puniest  infant  that 
comes  wailing  into  the  world  in  the  squalidest  room  of 
the  most  miserable  tenement  house,  becomes  at  that  mo- 
ment seized  of  an  equal  right  with  the  millionaires.  And 
it  is  robbed  if  the  right  is  denied. 

Our  previous  conclusions,  irresistible  in  themselves, 
thus  stand  approved  by  the  highest  and  final  test. 
Translated  from  terms  of  political  economy  into  terms  of 
ethics  they  show  a  wrong  as  the  source  of  the  evils  which 
increase  as  material  progress  goes  on. 

The  masses  of  men,  who  in  the  midst  of  abundance 
suffer  want;  who,  clothed  with  political  freedom,  are  con- 
demned to  the  wages  of  slavery;  to  whose  toil  labor-saving 
inventions  bring  no  relief,  but  rather  seem  to  rob  them 
of  a  privilege,  instinctively  feel  that  "there  is  something 
wrong."    And  they  are  right. 

The  wide-spreading  social  evils  which  everywhere  op- 
press men  amid  an  advancing  civilization  spring  from  a 
great  primary  wrong — the  appropriation,  as  the  exclusive 
property  of  some  men,  of  the  land  on  which  and  from 
which  all  must  live.  From  this  fundamental  injustice 
flow  all  the  injustices  which  distort  and  endanger  modern 
development,  which  condemn  the  producer  of  wealth  to 

*  This  natural  and  inalienable  right  to  the  equal  use  and  enjoy- 
ment of  land  is  so  apparent  that  it  has  been  recognized  by  men 
wherever  force  or  habit  has  not  blunted  first  perceptions.  To  give 
but  one  instance:  The  white  settlers  of  New  Zealand  found  them- 
selves unable  to  get  from  the  Maoris  what  the  latter  considered  a 
complete  title  to  land,  because,  although  a  whole  tribe  might  have 
consented  to  a  sale,  they  would  still  claim  with  every  new  child  born 
among  them  an  additional  payment  on  the  ground  that  they  had 
parted  with  only  their  own  rights,  and  could  not  sell  those  of  the  un- 
born. The  government  was  obliged  to  step  in  and  settle  the  matter 
by  buying  land  for  a  tribal  annuity,  in  which  every  child  that  is  born 
acquires  a  share. 


Chap.  1.    INJUSTICE  OF  PKIVATE  PROPERTY  IN  LAND.  339 

poverty  and  pamper  the  non-producer  in  luxury,  which 
rear  the  tenement  house  with  the  palace,  plant  the 
brothel  behind  the  church,  and  compel  us  to  build  pris- 
ons as  we  open  new  schools. 

There  is  nothing  strange  or  inexplicable  in  the  phe- 
nomena that  are  now  perplexing  the  world.  It  is  not 
that  material  progress  is  not  in  itself  a  good;  it  is  not 
that  nature  has  called  into  being  children  for  whom  she 
has  failed  to  provide;  it  is  not  that  the  Creator  has  left 
on  natural  laws  a  taint  of  injustice  at  which  even  the 
human  mind  revolts,  that  material  progress  brings  such 
bitter  fruits.  That  amid  our  highest  civilization  men 
faint  and  die  with  want  is  not  due  to  the  niggardliness  of 
nature,  but  to  the  injustice  of  man.  Vice  and  misery, 
poverty  and  pauperism,  are  not  the  legitimate  results  of 
increase  of  population  and  industrial  development;  they 
only  follow  increase  of  population  and  industrial  develop- 
ment because  land  is  treated  as  private  property — they 
are  the  direct  and  necessary  results  of  the  violation  of 
the  supreme  law  of  justice,  involved  in  giving  to  some 
men  the  exclusive  possession  of  that  which  nature  pro- 
vides for  all  men. 

The  recognition  of  individual  proprietorship  of  land  is 
the  denial  of  the  natural  rights  of  other  individuals — it  is 
a  wrong  which  jnust  show  itself  in  the  inequitable  divi- 
sion of  wealth.  For  as  labor  cannot  produce  without  the 
use  of  land,  the  denial  of  the  equal  right  to  the  use  of 
land  is  necessarily  the  denial  of  the  right  of  labor  to  its 
own  produce.  If  one  man  can  command  the  land  upon 
which  others  must  labor,  he  can  appropriate  the  produce 
of  their  labor  as  the  price  of  his  permission  to  labor. 
The  fundamental  law  of  nature,  that  her  enjoyment  by 
man  shall  be  consequent  upon  his  exertion,  is  thus  vio- 
lated. The  one  receives  without  producing;  the  others 
produce  without  receiving.  The  one  is  unjustly  enriched; 
the  others  are  robbed.    To  this  fundamental  wrong  we 


340  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BBMEDY.  Book  VIL 

have  traced  the  unjust  distribution  of  wealth  which  is 
separating  modem  society  into  the  very  rich  and  the  very 
poor.  It  is  the  continuous  increase  of  rent — the  price 
that  labor  is  compelled  to  pay  for  the  use  of  land,  which 
strips  the  many  of  the  wealth  they  justly  earn,  to  pile  it 
up  in  the  hands  of  the  few,  who  do  nothing  to  earn  it. 

Why  should  they  who  suffer  from  this  injustice  hesi- 
tate for  one  moment  to  sweep  it  away?  Who  are  the  land 
holders  that  they  should  thus  be  permitted  to  reap 
where  they  have  not  sown? 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  utter  asburdity  of  the  titles 
by  which  we  permit  to  be  gravely  passed  from  John  Doe 
to  Eichard  Roe  the  right  exclusively  to  possess  the  earth, 
giving  absolute  dominion  as  against  all  others.  In  Cali- 
fornia our  land  titles  go  back  to  the  Supreme  Government 
of  Mexico,  who  took  from  the  Spanish  King,  who  took 
from  the  Pope,  when  he  by  a  stroke  of  the  pen  divided 
lands  yet  to  be  discovered  between  the  Spanish  or  Por- 
tuguese— or  if  you  please  they  rest  upon  conquest.  In 
the  Eastern  States  they  go  back  to  treaties  with  Indians 
and  grants  from  English  Kings;  in  Louisiana  to  the  Gov- 
ernment of  France;  in  Florida  to  the  Government  of 
Spain;  while  in  England  they  go  back  to  the  Norman 
conquerors.  Everywhere,  not  to  a  right  which  obliges, 
but  to  a  force  which  compels.  And  when  a  title  rests 
but  on  force,  no  complaint  can  be  made  when  force  an- 
nuls it.  Whenever  the  people,  having  the  power,  choose 
to  annul  those  titles,  no  objection  can  be  made  in  the 
name  of  justice.  There  have  existed  men  who  had  the 
power  to  hold  or  to  give  exclusive  possession  of  portions 
of  the  earth's  surface,  but  when  and  where  did  there 
exist  the  human  being  who  had  the  right? 

The  right  to  exclusive  ownership  of  anything  of  human 
production  is  clear.  No  matter  how  many  the  hands 
through  which  it  has  passed,  there  was,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  line,  human  labor — some  one  who,  having  procured 


Chap.  L     INJUSTICE  OF  PEIVATE  PEOPERTY  IN  LAND.  341 

or  produced  it  by  his  exertions,  had  to  it  a  clear  title  as 
against  all  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  which  could  justly 
pass  from  one  to  another  by  sale  or  gift.  But  at  the  end 
of  what  string  of  conveyances  or  grants  can  be  shown  or 
supposed  a  like  title  to  any  part  of  the  material  universe? 
To  improvements  such  an  original  title  can  be  shown; 
but  it  is  a  title  only  to  the  improvements,  and  not  to  the 
land  itself.  If  I  clear  a  forest,  drain  a  swamp,  or  fill  a 
morass,  all  I  can  justly  claim  is  the  value  given  by  these 
exertions.  They  give  me  no  right  to  the  land  itself,  no 
claim  other  than  to  my  equal  share  with  every  other 
member  of  the  community  in  the  value  which  is  added  to 
it  by  the  growth  of  the  community. 

But  it  will  be  said:  There  are  improvements  which  in 
time  become  indistinguishable  from  the  land  itself!  Very 
well;  then  the  title  to  the  improvements  becomes  blended 
with  the  title  to  the  land;  the  individual  right  is  lost  in 
the  common  right.  It  is  the  greater  that  swallows  up 
the  less,  not  the  less  that  swallows  up  the  greater.  Na- 
ture does  not  proceed  from  man,  but  man  from  nature, 
and  it  is  into  the  bosom  of  nature  that  he  and  all  his 
works  must  return  again. 

Yet,  it  will  be  said:  As  every  man  has  a  right  to  the 
use  and  enjoyment  of  nature,  the  man  who  is  using  land 
must  be  permitted  the  exclusive  right  to  its  use  in  order 
that  he  may  get  the  full  benefit  of  his  labor.  But  there 
is  no  difficulty  in  determining  where  the  individual  right 
ends  and  the  common  right  begins.  A  delicate  and  ex- 
act test  is  supplied  by  value,  and  with  its  aid  there  is  no 
difficulty,  no  matter  how  dense  population  may  become, 
in  determining  and  securing  the  exact  rights  of  each,  the 
equal  rights  of  all.  The  value  of  land,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  the  price  of  monopoly.  It  is  not  the  absolute,  but  the 
relative,  capability  of  land  that  determines  its  value.  No 
matter  what  may  be  its  intrinsic  qualities,  land  that  is  no 
better  than  other  land  which  may  be  had  for  the  using 


342  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VII 

can  have  no  value.  And  the  value  of  land  always  meas- 
ures the  difference  between  it  and  the  best  land  that  may 
be  had  for  the  using.  Thus,  the  value  of  land  expresses 
in  exact  and  tangible  form  the  right  of  the  community  in 
land  held  by  an  individual;  and  rent  expresses  the  exact 
amount  which  the  individual  should  pay  to  the  commu- 
nity to  satisfy  the  equal  rights  of  all  other  members  of 
the  community.  Thus,  if  we  concede  to  priority  of  pos- 
session the  undisturbed  use  of  land,  confiscating  rent  for 
the  benefit  of  the  community,  we  reconcile  the  fixity  of 
tenure  which  is  necessary  for  improvement  with  a  full 
and  complete  recognition  of  the  equal  rights  of  all  to  the 
use  of  land. 

As  for  the  deduction  of  a  complete  and  exclusive  indi- 
vidual right  to  land  from  priority  of  occupation,  that  is, 
if  possible,  the  most  absurd  ground  on  which  land  owner- 
ship can  be  defended.  Priority  of  occupation  give  exclu- 
sive and  perpetual  title  to  the  surface  of  a  globe  on 
which,  in  the  order  of  nature,  countless  generations  suc- 
ceed each  other!  Had  the  men  of  the  last  generation 
any  better  right  to  the  use  of  this  world  than  we  of  this? 
or  the  men  of  a  hundred  years  ago?  or  of  a  thousand 
years  ago?  Had  the  mound-builders,  or  the  cave-dwell- 
ers, the  contemporaries  of  the  mastodon  and  the  three- 
toed  horse,  or  the  generations  still  further  back,  who,  in 
dim  sBons  that  we  can  think  of  only  as  geologic  periods, 
followed  each  other  on  the  earth  we  now  tenant  for  our 
little  day? 

Has  the  first  comer  at  a  banquet  the  right  to  turn  back 
all  the  chairs  and  claim  that  none  of  the  other  guests 
shall  partake  of  the  food  provided,  except  as  they  make 
terms  with  him?  Does  the  first  man  who  presents  a 
ticket  at  the  door  of  a  theater,  and  passes  in,  acquire  by 
his  priority  the  right  to  shut  the  doors  and  have  the  per- 
formance go  on  for  him  alone?  Does  the  first  passenger 
who  enters  a  railroad  car  obtain  the  right  to  scatter  his 


Chap.  T.      INJUSTICE  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IN  LAND.        343 

baggage  over  all  the  seats  and  compel  the  passengers  who 
come  in  after  him  to  stand  up? 

The  cases  are  perfectly  analogous.  We  arrive  and  we 
depart,  guests  at  a  banquet  continually  spread,  specta- 
tors and  participants  in  an  entertainment  where  there  is 
room  for  all  who  come;  passengers  from  station  to  sta- 
tion, on  an  orb  that  whirls  through  space — our  rights  o 
take  and  possess  cannot  be  exclusive;  they  must  be 
bounded  everywhere  by  the  equal  rights  of  others.  Just 
as  the  passenger  in  a  railroad  car  may  spread  himself 
and  his  baggage  over  as  many  seats  as  he  pleases,  until 
other  passengers  come  in,  so  may  a  settler  take  and  use 
as  much  land  as  he  chooses,  until  it  is  needed  by  others — 
a  fact  which  is  shown  by  the  land  acquiring  a  value — when 
his  right  must  be  curtailed  by  the  equal  rights  of  the 
others,  and  no  priority  of  appropriation  can  give  a  right 
which  will  bar  these  equal  rights  of  others.  If  this  were 
not  the  case,  then  by  priority  of  appropriation  one  man 
could  acquire  and  could  transmit  to  whom  he  pleased, 
not  merely  the  exclusive  right  to  160  acres,  or  to  640 
acres,  but  to  a  whole  township,  a  whole  State,  a  whole 
continent. 

And  to  this  manifest  absurdity  does  the  recognition  of 
individual  right  to  land  come  when  carried  to  its  ultimate 
— that  any  one  human  being,  could  he  concentrate  in 
himself  the  individual  rights  to  the  land  of  any  country, 
could  expel  therefrom  all  the  rest  of  its  inhabitants;  and 
could  he  thus  concentrate  the  individual  rights  to  the 
whole  surface  of  the  globe,  he  alone  of  all  the  teeming 
population  of  the  earth  would  have  the  right  to  live. 

And  what  upon  this  supposition  would  occur  is,  upon  a 
smaller  scale,  realized  in  actual  fact.  The  territorial 
lords  of  Great  Britain,  to  whom  grants  of  land  have  given 
the  "white  parasols  and  elephants  mad  with  pride,"  have 
over  and  over  again  expelled  from  large  districts  the  na- 
tive population,  whose  ancestors  had  lived  on  the  land 


344  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BEMBDY.  Book  VTL 

from  immemorial  times — driven  them  off  to  emigrate,  to 
become  paupers,  or  to  starve.  And  on  uncultivated 
tracts  of  land  in  the  ne  w  State  of  California  may  be  seen  the 
blackened  chimneys  of  homes  from  which  settlers  have 
been  driven  by  force  of  laws  which  ignore  natural  right, 
and  great  stretches  of  land  which  might  be  populous  are 
desolate,  because  the  recognition  of  exclusive  ownership 
has  put  it  in  the  power  of  one  human  creature  to  forbid 
his  fellows  from  using  it.  The  comparative  handful  of 
proprietors  who  own  the  surface  of  the  British  Islands 
would  be  doing  only  what  English  law  gives  them  full 
power  to  do,  and  what  many  of  them  have  done  on  a 
smaller  scale  already,  were  they  to  exclude  the  millions 
of  British  people  from  their  native  islands.  And  such 
an  exclusion,  by  which  a  few  hundred  thousand  should 
at  will  banish  thirty  million  people  from  their  native 
country,  while  it  would  be  more  striking,  would  not  be  a 
whit  more  repugnant  to  natural  right  than  the  spectacle 
now  presented,  of  the  vast  body  of  the  British  people  be- 
ing compelled  to  pay  such  enormous  sums  to  a  few  of 
their  number  for  the  privilege  of  being  permitted  to  live 
upon  and  use  the  land  which  they  so  fondly  call  their 
own;  which  is  endeared  to  them  by  memories  so  tender 
and  so  glorious,  and  for  which  they  are  held  in  duty 
bound,  if  need  be,  to  spill  their  blood  and  lay  down  their 
lives. 

I  refer  only  to  the  British  Islands,  because,  land  own- 
ership being  more  concentrated  there,  they  afford  a  more 
striking  illustation  of  what  private  property  in  land  nec- 
essarily involves.  ''To  whomsoever  the  soil  at  any  time 
belongs,  to  him  belong  the  fruits  of  it,"  is  a  truth  that 
becomes  more  and  more  apparent  as  population  becomes 
denser  and  invention  and  improvement  add  to  produc- 
tive power;  but  it  is  everywhere  a  truth — as  much  in  our 
new  States  as  in  the  British  Islands  or  by  the  banks  of 
the  Indus. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  ENSLAVEMENT  OF  LABORERS  THE  ULTIMATE  EESULT 
OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IN  LAND. 

If  chattel  slavery  be  unjust,  then  is  private  property  in 
land  unjust. 

For  let  the  circumstances  be  what  they  may — the  own- 
ership of  land  will  always  give  the  ownership  of  men,  to 
a  degree  measured  by  the  necessity  (real  or  artificial)  for 
the  use  of  land.  This  is  but  a  statement  in  different 
form  of  the  law  of  rent. 

And  when  that  necessity  is  absolute — when  starvation 
is  the  alternative  to  the  use  of  land,  then  does  the  own- 
ership of  men  involved  in  the  ownership  of  land  become 
absolute. 

Place  one  hundred  men  on  an  island  from  which  there 
is  no  escape,  and  whether  you  make  one  of  these  men  the 
absolute  owner  of  the  other  ninety-nine,  or  the  absolute 
owner  of  the  soil  of  the  island,  will  make  no  difference 
either  to  him  or  to  them. 

In  the  one  case,  as  the  other,  the  one  will  be  the  abso- 
lute master  of  the  ninety-nine — his  power  extending  even 
to  life  and  death,  for  simply  to  refuse  them  permission  to 
live  upon  the  island  would  be  to  force  them  into  the  sea. 

Upon  a  larger  scale,  and  through  more  complex  rela- 
tions, the  same  cause  must  operate  in  the  same  way  and 
to  the  same  end — the  ultimate  result,  the  enslavement  of 
laborers,  becoming  apparent  just  as  the  pressure  increases 
which  compels  them  to  live  on  and  from  land  which  is 
treated  as  the  exclusive  property  of  others.  Take  a 
country  in  which  the  soil  is  divided  among  a  number  of 


346  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BEMEDY.  Book  VJl. 

proprietors,  instead  of  being  in  the  hands  of  one,  and  in 
•which,  as  in  modern  prodnction,  the  capitalist  has  been 
specialized  from  the  laborer,  and  manufactures  and  ex- 
change, in  all  their  many  branches,  have  been  separated 
from  agriculture.  Though  less  direct  and  obvious,  the 
relations  between  the  owners  of  the  soil  and  the  laborers 
•will,  with  increase  of  population  and  the  improvement  of 
the  arts,  tend  to  the  same  absolute  mastery  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  same  abject  helplessness  on  the  other,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  island  we  have  supposed.  Rent  will  ad- 
vance, while  wages  will  fall.  Of  the  aggregate  produce, 
the  land  owner  will  get  a  constantly  increasing,  the 
laborer  a  constantly  diminishing  share.  Just  as  removal 
to  cheaper  land  becomes  difficult  or  impossible,  laborers, 
no  matter  what  they  produce,  will  be  reduced  to  a  bare 
living,  and  the  free  competition  among  them,  where  land 
is  monopolized,  will  force  them  to  a  condition  which, 
though  they  may  be  mocked  with  the  titles  and  insignia 
of  freedom,  will  be  virtually  that  of  slavery. 

There  is  nothing  strange  in  the  fact  that,  in  spite  of 
the  enormous  increase  in  productive  power  which  this 
century  has  witnessed,  and  which  is  still  going  on,  the 
wages  of  labor  in  the  lower  and  wider  strata  of  industry 
should  everywhere  tend  to  the  wages  of  slavery — just 
enough  to  keep  the  laborer  in  working  condition.  For 
the  ownership  of  the  land  on  which  and  from  which  a 
man  must  live  is  virtually  the  ownership  of  the  man 
himself,  and  in  acknowledging  the  right  of  some  individ- 
uals to  the  exclusive  use  and  enjoyment  of  the  earth,  we 
condemn  other  individuals  to  slavery  as  fully  and  as  com- 
pletely as  though  we  had  formally  made  them  chattels. 

In  a  simpler  form  of  society,  where  production  chiefly 
consists  in  the  direct  application  of  labor  to  the  soil,  the 
slavery  that  is  the  necessary  result  of  according  to  some 
the  exclusive  right  to  the  soil  from  which  all  must  live, 
is  plainly  seen  in  helotism,  in  villeinage,  in  serfdom. 


Chap.n.  ENSLAVEMEirr  OF  LAB0EEB8.  347 

Chattel  slavery  originated  in  the  capture  of  prisoners 
in  war,  and,  though  it  has  existed  to  some  extent  in 
every  part  of  the  globe,  its  area  has  been  small,  its  effects 
trivial,  as  compared  with  the  forms  of  slavery  which  have 
originated  in  the  appropriation  of  land.  No  people  as  a 
mass  have  ever  been  reduced  to  chattel  slavery  to  men  of 
their  own  race,  nor  yet  on  any  large  scale  has  any  people 
ever  been  reduced  to  slavery  of  this  kind  by  conquest. 
The  general  subjection  of  the  many  to  the  few,  which  we 
meet  with  wherever  society  has  reached  a  certain  develop- 
ment, has  resulted  from  the  appropriation  of  land  as  in- 
dividual property.  It  is  the  ownership  of  the  soil  that 
everywhere  gives  the  ownership  of  the  men  that  live 
npon  it.  It  is  slavery  of  this  kind  to  which  the  enduring 
pyramids  and  the  colossal  monuments  of  Egypt  yet  bear 
witness,  and  of  the  institution  of  which  we  have,  perhaps, 
a  vague  tradition  in  the  biblical  story  of  the  famine  dur- 
ing which  the  Pharaoh  purchased  up  the  lands  of  the 
people.  It  was  slavery  of  this  kind  to  which,  in  the 
twilight  of  history,  the  conquerors  of  Greece  reduced  the 
original  inhabitants  of  that  peninsula,  transforming  them 
into  helots  by  making  them  pay  rent  for  their  lands.  It 
was  the  growth  of  the  latifundia,  or  great  landed  estates, 
which  transmuted  the  population  of  ancient  Italy,  from 
a  race  of  hardy  husbandmen,  whose  robust  virtues  con- 
quered the  world,  into  a  race  of  cringing  bondsmen;  it 
was  the  appropriation  of  the  land  as  the  absolute  prop- 
erty of  their  chieftains  which  gradually  turned  the  de- 
scendants of  free  and  equal  Gallic,  Teutonic  and  Hunnish 
warriors  into  colonii  and  villains,  and  which  changed  the 
independent  burghers  of  Sclavonic  village  communities 
into  the  boors  of  Russia  and  the  serfs  of  Poland;  which 
instituted  the  feudalism  of  China  and  Japan,  as  well  as 
that  of  Europe,  and  which  made  the  High  Chiefs  of 
Polynesia  the  all  but  absolute  masters  of  their  fellows. 
How  it  came  to  pass  that  the  Aryan  shepherds  and  warriors 


348  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIL 

who,  as  comparative  philology  tells  us,  descended  from  the 
common  birthplace  of  the  Indo-Germanic  race  into  the 
lowlands  of  India,  were  turned  into  the  suppliant  and 
cringing  Hindoo,  the  Sanscrit  verse  which  I  have  before 
quoted  gives  us  a  hint.  The  white  parasols  and  the  ele- 
phants mad  with  pride  of  the  Indian  Eajah  are  the  flow- 
ers of  grants  of  land.  And  could  we  find  the  key  to  the 
records  of  the  long-buried  civilizations  that  lie  entombed 
in  the  gigantic  ruins  of  Yucatan  and  Guatemala,  telling 
at  once  of  the  pride  of  a  ruling  class  and  the  unrequited 
toil  to  which  the  masses  were  condemned,  we  should  read, 
in  all  human  probability,  of  a  slavery  imposed  upon  the 
great  body  of  the  people  through  the  appropriation  of 
the  land  as  the  property  of  a  few — of  another  illustration 
of  the  universal  truth  that  they  who  possess  the  land  are 
masters  of  the  men  who  dwell  upon  it. 

The  necessary  relation  between  labor  and  land,  the  ab- 
solute power  which  the  ownership  of  land  gives  over  men 
who  cannot  live  but  by  using  it,  explains  what  is  other- 
wise inexplicable — the  growth  and  persistence  of  institu- 
tions, manners,  and  ideas  so  utterly  repugnant  to  the 
natural  sense  of  liberty  and  equality. 

When  the  idea  of  individual  ownership,  which  so  justly 
and  naturally  attaches  to  things  of  human  production,  is 
extended  to  land,  all  the  rest  is  a  mere  matter  of  develop- 
ment. The  strongest  and  most  cunning  easily  acquire  a 
superior  share  in  this  species  of  property,  which  is  to  be 
had,  not  by  production,  but  by  appropriation,  and  in  be- 
coming lords  of  the  land  they  become  necessarily  lords  of 
their  fellow-men.  The  ownership  of  land  is  the  basis  of 
aristocracy.  It  was  not  nobility  that  gave  land,  but  the 
possession  of  land  that  gave  nobility.  All  the  enormous 
privileges  of  the  nobility  of  medieval  Europe  flowed  from 
their  position  as  the  owners  of  the  soil.  The  simple 
principle  of  the  ownership  of  the  soil  produced,  on  the 
one  side,  the  lord,  on  the  other,  the  vassal — the  one  hay- 


Chap.n.  EXSLAyEME:EfT  OF  LABOBEBS.  349 

ing  all  rights,  the  other  none.  The  right  of  the  lord  to 
the  soil  acknowledged  and  maintained,  those  who  lived 
upon  it  could  do  so  only  upon  his  terms.  The  manners 
and  conditions  of  the  times  made  those  terms  include 
services  and  servitudes,  as  well  as  rents  in  produce  or 
money,  but  the  essential  thing  that  compelled  them  was 
the  ownership  of  land.  This  power  exists  wherever  the 
ownership  of  land  exists,  and  can  be  brought  out  wher- 
ever the  competition  for  the  use  of  land  is  great  enough 
to  enable  the  landlord  to  make  his  own  terms.  The 
English  land  owner  of  to-day  has,  in  the  law  which  rec- 
ognizes his  exclusive  right  to  the  land,  essentially  all  the 
power  which  his  predecessor  the  feudal  baron  had.  He 
might  command  rent  in  services  or  servitudes.  He  might 
compel  his  tenants  to  dress  themselves  in  a  particular  way, 
to  profess  a  particular  religion,  to  send  their  children  to  a 
particular  school,  to  submit  their  differences  to  his  decision, 
to  fall  upon  their  knees  when  he  spoke  to  them,  to  follow 
him  around  dressed  in  his  livery,  or  to  sacrifice  to  him 
female  honor,  if  they  would  prefer  these  things  to  being 
driven  off  his  land.  He  could  demand,  in  short,  any  terms 
on  which  men  would  still  consent  to  live  on  his  land,  and 
the  law  could  not  prevent  him  so  long  as  it  did  not  qual- 
ify his  ownership,  for  compliance  with  them  would  as- 
sume the  form  of  a  free  contract  or  voluntary  act.  And 
English  landlords  do  exercise  such  of  these  powers  as  in 
the  manners  of  the  times  they  care  to.  Having  shaken 
off  the  obligation  of  providing  for  the  defense  of  the 
country,  they  no  longer  need  the  military  service  of  their 
tenants,  and  the  possession  of  wealth  and  power  being 
now  shown  in  other  ways  than  by  long  trains  of  attend- 
ants, they  no  longer  care  for  personal  service.  But  they 
habitually  control  the  votes  of  their  tenants,  and  dictate 
to  them  in  many  little  ways.  That  "right  reverend 
father  in  God,"  Bishop  Lord  Plunkett,  evicted  a  num- 
ber of  his  poor  Irish  tenants  because  they  would  not  send 


350  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BEMEDT.  Boole  VIL 

their  children  to  Protestant  Sunday-schools;  and  to  that 
Earl  of  Leitrim  for  whom  Nemesis  tarried  so  long  before 
she  sped  the  bullet  of  an  assassin,  even  darker  crimes  are 
imputed;  while,  at  the  cold  promptings  of  greed,  cottage 
after  cottage  has  been  pulled  down  and  family  after 
family  forced  into  the  roads.  The  principle  that  permits 
this  is  the  same  principle  that  in  ruder  times  and  a  sim- 
pler social  state  enthralled  the  great  masses  of  the  com- 
mon people  and  placed  such  a  wide  gulf  between  noble 
and  peasant.  Where  the  peasant  was  made  a  serf,  it  was 
simply  by  forbidding  him  to  leave  the  estate  on  which  he 
was  born,  thus  artificially  producing  the  condition  we 
supposed  on  the  island.  In  sparsely  settled  countries 
this  is  necessary  to  produce  absolute  slavery,  but  where 
land  is  fully  occupied,  competition  may  produce  substan- 
tially the  same  conditions.  Between  the  condition  of  the 
rack-rented  Irish  peasant  and  the  Eussian  serf,  the  ad- 
vantage was  in  many  things  on  the  side  of  the  serf.  The 
serf  did  not  starve. 

Now,  as  I  think  I  have  conclusively  proved,  it  is  the 
same  cause  which  has  in  every  age  degraded  and  enslaved 
the  laboring  masses  that  is  working  in  the  civilized 
world  to-day.  Personal  liberty — that  is  to  say,  the  lib- 
erty to  move  about — is  everywhere  conceded,  while  of 
political  and  legal  inequality  there  are  in  the  United 
States  no  vestiges,  and  in  the  most  backward  civilized 
countries  but  few.  But  the  great  cause  of  inequality  re- 
mains, and  is  manifesting  itself  in  the  unequal  distribu- 
tion of  wealth.  The  essence  of  slavery  is  that  it  takes 
from  the  laborer  all  he  produces  save  enough  to  support 
an  animal  existence,  and  to  this  minimum  the  wages  of 
free  labor,  under  existing  conditions,  unmistakably  tend. 
Whatever  be  the  increase  of  productive  power,  rent 
steadily  tends  to  swallow  up  the  gain,  and  more  than  the 
gain. 


CTiap.n.  ENSLAVEMENT  OF  LABOKEKS.  351 

Thus  the  condition  of  the  masses  in  every  civilized 
country  is,  or  is  tending  to  become,  that  of  virtual  slav- 
ery under  the  forms  of  freedom.  And  it  is  probable  that 
of  all  kinds  of  slavery  this  is  the  most  cruel  and  relent- 
less. For  the  laborer  is  robbed  of  the  produce  of  his 
labor  and  compelled  to  toil  for  a  mere  subsistence;  but 
his  taskmasters,  instead  of  human  beings,  assume  the 
form  of  imperious  necessities.  Those  to  whom  his  labor 
is  rendered  and  from  whom  his  wages  are  received  are 
often  driven  in  their  turn — contact  between  the  laborers 
and  the  ultimate  beneficiaries  of  their  labor  is  sundered, 
and  individuality  is  lost.  The  direct  responsibility  of 
master  to  slave,  a  responsibility  which  exercises  a  soften- 
ing influence  upon  the  great  majority  of  men,  does  not 
arise;  it  is  not  one  human  being  who  seems  to  drive 
another  to  unremitting  and  ill-requited  toil,  but  **the 
inevitable  laws  of  supply  and  demand,"  for  which  no  one 
in  particular  is  responsible.  The  maxims  of  Cato  the 
Censor — maxims  which  were  regarded  with  abhorrence 
even  in  an  age  of  cruelty  and  universal  slaveholding — 
that  after  as  much  work  as  possible  is  obtained  from  a 
slave  he  should  be  turned  out  to  die,  become  the  common 
rule;  and  even  the  selfish  interest  which  prompts  the 
master  to  look  after  the  comfort  and  well-being  of  the 
slave  is  lost.  Labor  has  become  a  commodity,  and  the 
laborer  a  machine.  There  are  no  masters  and  slaves,  no 
owners  and  owned,  but  only  buyers  and  sellers.  The 
higgling  of  the  market  takes  the  place  of  every  other 
sentiment. 

When  the  slaveholders  of  the  South  looked  upon  the 
condition  of  the  free  laboring  poor  in  the  most  advanced 
civilized  countries,  it  is  no  wonder  that  they  easily  per- 
suaded themselves  of  the  divine  institution  of  slavery. 
That  the  field  hands  of  the  South  were  as  a  class  better 
fed,  better  lodged,  better  clothed;  that  they  had  less  anxi- 


352  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Bock  VIL 

ety  and  more  of  the  amusements  and  enjoyments  of  life 
than  the  agricultural  laborers  of  England  there  can  be 
no  doubt;  and  even  in  the  Northern  cities,  visiting  slave- 
holders might  see  and  hear  of  things  impossible  under 
what  they  called  their  organization  of  labor.  In  the 
Southern  States,  during  the  days  of  slavery,  the  master 
who  would  have  compelled  his  negroes  to  work  and  live 
as  large  classes  of  free  white  men  and  women  are  com- 
pelled in  free  countries  to  work  and  live,  would  have  been 
deemed  infamous,  and  if  public  opinion  had  not  restrained 
him,  his  own  selfish  interest  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
health  and  strength  of  his  chattels  would.  But  in  Lon- 
don, New  York,  and  Boston,  among  people  who  have  given, 
and  would  give  again,  money  and  blood  to  free  the  slave, 
where  no  one  could  abuse  a  beast  in  public  without  arrest 
and  punishment,  barefooted  and  ragged  children  may  be 
seen  running  around  the  streets  even  in  the  winter  time, 
and  in  squalid  garrets  and  noisome  cellars  women  work 
away  their  lives  for  wages  that  fail  to  keep  them  in  proper 
warmth  and  nourishment.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  to  the 
slaveholders  of  the  South  the  demand  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  seemed  like  the  cant  of  hypocrisy? 

And  now  that  slavery  has  been  abolished,  the  planters 
of  the  South  find  fchey  have  sustained  no  loss.  Their 
ownership  of  the  land  upon  which  the  freedmen  must 
live  gives  them  practically  as  much  command  of  labor  as 
before,  while  they  are  relieved  of  responsibility,  sometimes 
very  expensive.  The  negroes  as  yet  have  the  alternative 
of  emigrating,  and  a  great  movement  of  that  kind  seems 
now  about  commencing,  but  as  population  increases  and 
land  becomes  dear,  the  planters  will  get  a  greater  propor- 
tionate share  of  the  earnings  of  their  laborers  than  they 
did  under  the  system  of  chattel  slavery,  and  the  laborers 
a  less  share — for  under  the  system  of  chattel  slavery  the 
slaves  always  got  at  least  enough  to  keep  them  in  good 


Chap.n.  ENSLAVEMENT  OF  LABORERS.         353 

physical  health,  but  in  such  countries  as  England  there 
are  large  classes  of  laborers  who  do  not  get  that.* 

The  influences  which,  wherever  there  is  personal  rela- 
tion between  master  and  slave,  slip  in  to  modify  chattel 
slavery,  and  to  prevent  the  master  from  exerting  to  its 
fullest  extent  his  power  over  the  slave,  also  showed  them- 
selves in  the  ruder  forms  of  serfdom  that  characterized 
the  earlier  periods  of  European  development,  and  aided 
by  religion,  and,  perhaps,  as  in  chattel  slavery,  by  the 
more  enlightened  but  still  selfish  interests  of  the  lord, 
and  hardening  into  custom,  universally  fixed  a  limit  to 
what  the  owner  of  the  land  could  extort  from  the  serf  or 
peasant,  so  that  the  competition  of  men  without  means 
of  existence  bidding  against  each  other  for  access  to  the 
means  of  existence,  was  nowhere  suffered  to  go  to  its  full 
length  and  exert  its  full  power  of  deprivation  and  degra- 
dation. The  helots  of  Greece,  the  metayers  of  Italy,  the 
serfs  of  Eussia  and  Poland,  the  peasants  of  feudal  Eu- 
rope, rendered  to  their  landlords  a  fixed  proportion  either 
of  their  produce  or  their  labor,  and  were  not  generally 
squeezed  past  that  point.  But  the  influences  which  thus 
stepped  in  to  modify  the  extortive  power  of  land  owaer- 
ship,  and  which  may  still  be  seen  on  English  estates 
where  the  landlord  and  his  family  deem  it  their  duty  to 
send  medicines  and  comforts  to  the  sick  and  infirm,  and 
to  look  after  the  well-being  of  their  cottagers,  just  as  the 
Southern  planter  was  accustomed  to  look  after  his 
negroes,  are  lost  in  the  more  refined  and  less  obvious 
form  which  serfdom  assumes  in  the  more  complicated 
processes  of    modern   production,    which    separates  so 

*  One  of  the  anti-slavery  agitators  (Col.  J.  A.  Collins)  on  a  visit 
to  England  addressed  a  large  audience  in  a  Scotch  manufacturing 
town,  and  wound  up  as  he  had  been  used  to  in  the  United  States, 
by  giving  the  ration  which  in  the  slave  codes  of  some  of  the  States 
fixed  the  minimum  of  maintenance  for  a  slave.  He  quickly  diacov 
ered  that  to  many  of  his  hearers  it  was  an  anti-climax. 


854  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VH. 

widely  and  by  so  many  intermediate  gradations  the  indi- 
vidual whose  labor  is  appropriated  from  him  who  appro- 
priates it,  and  makes  the  relations  between  the  members 
of  the  two  classes  not  direct  and  particular,  but  indirect 
and  general.  In  modern  society,  competition  has  free 
play  to  force  from  the  laborer  the  very  utmost  he  can 
give,  and  with  what  terrific  force  it  is  acting  may  be  seen 
in  the  condition  of  the  lowest  class  in  the  centers  of 
wealth  and  industry.  That  the  condition  of  this  lowest 
class  is  not  yet  more  general,  is  to  be  attributed  to  the 
great  extent  of  fertile  land  which  has  hitherto  been  open 
on  this  continent,  and  which  has  not  merely  afforded  an 
escape  for  the  increasing  population  of  the  older  sections 
of  the  Union,  but  has  greatly  relieved  the  pressure  in 
Europe — in  one  country,  Ireland,  the  emigration  having 
been  so  great  as  actually  to  reduce  the  population.  This 
avenue  of  relief  cannot  last  forever.  It  is  already  fast 
closing  up,  and  as  it  closes,  the  pressure  must  become 
harder  and  harder. 

It  is  not  without  reason  that  the  wise  crow  in  the 
Eamayana,  the  crow  Bushanda,  "who  has  lived  in  every 
part  of  the  universe  and  knows  all  events  from  the  begin- 
nings of  time,"  declares  that,  though  contempt  of  worldly 
advantages  is  necessary  to  supreme  felicity,  yet  the  keen- 
est pain  possible  is  inflicted  by  extreme  poverty.  The 
poverty  to  which  in  advancing  civilization  great  masses 
of  men  are  condemned,  is  not  the  freedom  from  distrac- 
tion and  temptation  which  sages  have  sought  and  philos- 
ophers have  praised;  it  is  a  degrading  and  embruting 
slavery,  that  cramps  the  higher  nature,  dulls  the  finer 
feelings,  and  drives  men  by  its  pain  to  acts  which  the 
brutes  would  refuse.  It  is  into  this  helpless,  hopeless 
poverty,  that  crushes  manhood  and  destroys  womanhood, 
that  robs  even  childhood  of  its  innocence  and  joy,  that 
the  working  classes  are  being  driven  by  a  force  which  acts 
upon  them  like  a  resistless  and  unpitying  machine.    The 


Chap.n.  ENSLAVEMENT  OF  LABORERS.  355 

Boston  collar  manufacturer  who  pays  his  girls  two  cents 
an  hour  may  commiserate  their  condition,  but  he,  as 
they,  is  governed  by  the  law  of  competition,  and  cannot 
pay  more  and  carry  on  his  business,  for  exchange  is  not 
governed  by  sentiment.  And  so,  through  all  interme- 
diate gradations,  up  to  those  who  receive  the  earnings  of 
labor  without  return,  in  the  rent  of  land,  it  is  the  inex- 
orable laws  of  supply  and  demand,  a  power  with  which 
the  individual  can  no  more  quarrel  or  dispute  than  with 
the  winds  and  the  tides,  that  seem  to  press  down  the 
lower  classes  into  the  slavery  of  want. 

But  in  reality,  the  cause  is  that  which  always  has  and 
always  must  result  in  slavery — the  monopolization  by 
some  of  what  nature  has  designed  for  all. 

Our  boasted  freedom  necessarily  involves  slavery,  so 
long  as  we  recognize  private  property  in  land.  Until 
that  is  abolished.  Declarations  of  Independence  and  Acts 
of  Emancipation  are  in  vain.  So  long  as  one  man  can 
claim  the  exclusive  ownership  of  the  land  from  which 
other  "men  must  live,  slavery  will  exist,  and  as  material 
progress  goes  on,  must  grow  and  deepen! 

This — and  in  previous  chapters  of  this  book  we  have 
traced  the  process,  step  by  step — is  what  is  going  on  in 
the  civilized  world  to-day.  Private  ownership  of  land  is 
the  nether  millstone.  Material  progress  is  the  upper 
millstone.  Between  them,  with  an  increasing  pressure, 
the  working  classes  are  being  ground. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CLAIM   OP  LAND  OWlfERS  TO  COMPENSATIOS". 

The  truth  is,  and  from  this  truth  there  can  be  no 
escape,  that  there  is  and  can  be  no  just  title  to  an  ex- 
clusive possession  of  the  soil,  and  that  private  property 
in  land  is  a  bold,  bare,  enormous  wrong,  like  that  of 
chattel  slavery. 

The  majority  of  men  in  civilized  communities  do  not 
recognize  this,  simply  because  the  majority  of  men  do 
not  think.  With  them  whatever  is,  is  right,  until  its 
wrongfulness  has  been  frequently  pointed  out,  and  in 
general  they  are  ready  to  crucify  whoever  first  attempts 
this. 

But  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  study  political 
economy,  even  as  at  present  taught,  or  to  think  at  all 
upon  the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth,  without 
seeing  that  property  in  land  differs  essentially  from  prop- 
erty in  things  of  human  production,  and  that  it  has  no 
warrant  in  abstract  justice. 

This  is  admitted,  either  expressly  or  tacitly,  in  every 
standard  work  on  political  economy,  but  in  general  merely 
by  vague  admission  or  omission.  Attention  is  in  general 
called  away  from  the  truth,  as  a  lecturer  on  moral  philos- 
ophy in  a  slave-holding  community  might  call  away  at- 
tention from  too  close  a  consideration  of  the  natural 
rights  of  men,  and  private  property  in  land  is  accepted 
without  comment,  as  an  existing  fact,  or  is  assumed  to 
be  necessary  to  the  proper  use  of  land  and  the  existence 
of  the  civilized  state. 

The  examination  through  which  we  have  passed  has 


Chap.  m.    CLAIM  OP  LAND  OWNERS  TO  COMPENSATION.      357 

proved  conclusively  that  private  property  in  land  cannot 
be  justified  on  the  ground  of  utility — that,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  is  the  great  cause  to  which  are  to  be  traced  the 
poverty,  misery,  and  degradation,  the  social  disease  and 
the  political  weakness  which  are  showing  themselves  so 
menacingly  amid  advancing  civilization.  Expediency, 
therefore,  joins  justice  in  demanding  that  we  abolish  it. 

When  expediency  thus  joins  justice  in  demanding  that 
we  abolish  an  institution  that  has  no  broader  base  or 
stronger  ground  than  a  mere  municipal  regulation,  what 
reason  can  there  be  for  hesitation? 

The  consideration  that  seems  to  cause  hesitation,  even 
on  the  part  of  those  who  see  clearly  that  land  by  right  is 
common  property,  is  the  idea  that  having  permitted  land 
to  be  treated  as  private  property  for  so  long,  we  should  in 
abolishing  it  be  doing  a  wrong  to  those  who  have  been 
suffered  to  base  their  calculations  upon  its  permanence; 
that  having  permitted  land  to  be  held  as  rightful  prop- 
erty, we  should  by  the  resumption  of  common  rights  be 
doing  injustice  to  those  who  have  purchased  it  with  what 
was  unquestionably  their  rightful  property.  Thus,  it  is 
held  that  if  we  abolish  private  property  in  land,  justice 
requires  that  we  should  fully  compensate  those  who  now 
possess  it,  as  the  British  Government,  in  abolishing  the 
purchase  and  sale  of  military  commissions,  felt  itself 
bound  to  compensate  those  who  held  commissions  which 
they  had  purchased  in  the  belief  that  they  could  sell  them 
again,  or  as  in  abolishing  slavery  in  the  British  West 
Indies  $100,000,000  was  paid  the  slaveholders. 

Even  Herbert  Spencer,  who  in  his  "Social  Statics"  has 
^o  clearly  demonstrated  the  invalidity  of  every  title  by 
which  the  exclusive  possession  of  land  is  claimed,  gives 
countenance  to  this  idea  (though  it  seems  to  me  incon- 
sistently) by  declaring  that  justly  to  estimate  and  liquidate 
the  claims  of  the  present  landholders  "who  have  either 
ty  their  own  acts  or  by  the  acts  of  their  ancestors  given 


358  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VU. 

for  their  estates  equivalents  of  honestly-earned  wealth," 
to  be  "one  of  the  most  intricate  problems  society  will 
one  day  have  to  solve.*' 

It  is  this  idea  that  suggests  the  proposition,  which 
finds  advocates  in  Great  Britain,  that  the  government 
shall  purchase  at  its  market  price  the  individual  proprie- 
torship of  the  land  of  the  country,  and  it  was  this  idea 
which  led  John  Stuart  Mill,  although  clearly  perceiving 
the  essential  injustice  of  private  property  in  land,  to 
advocate,  not  a  full  resumption  of  the  land,  but  only  a 
resumption  of  accruing  advantages  in  the  future.  Hia 
plan  was  that  a  fair  and  even  liberal  estimate  should  be 
made  of  the  market  value  of  all  the  land  in  the  kingdom, 
and  that  future  additions  to  that  value,  not  due  to  the 
improvements  of  the  proprietor,  should  be  taken  by  the 
state. 

To  say  nothing  of  the  practical  difficulties  which  such 
cumbrous  plans  involve,  in  the  extension  of  the  functions 
of  government  which  they  would  require  and  the  corrup- 
tion they  would  beget,  their  inherent  and  essential  defect 
lies  in  the  impossibility  of  bridging  over  by  any  compro- 
mise the  radical  difference  between  wrong  and  right. 
Justin  proportion  as  the  interests  of  the  land  holders  are 
conserved,  just  in  that  proportion  must  general  interests 
and  general  rights  be  disregarded,  and  if  land  holders  are 
to  lose  nothing  of  their  special  privileges,  the  people  at 
large  can  gain  nothing.  To  buy  up  individual  property 
rights  would  merely  be  to  give  the  land  holders  in  another 
form  a  claim  of  the  same  kind  and  amount  that  their 
possession  of  land  now  gives  them;  it  would  be  to  raise 
for  them  by  taxation  the  same  proportion  of  the  earnings 
of  labor  and  capital  that  they  are  now  enabled  to  appro- 
priate in  rent.  Their  unjust  advantage  would  be  pre- 
served and  the  unjust  disadvantage  of  the  non-landhold- 
ers would  be  continued.  To  be  sure  there  would  be  a 
gain  to  the  people  at  large  when  the  advance  of  rents  had 


Clug^.  m.    CLAIM  OP  LAND  OWNERS  TO  COMPENSATION.      359 

made  the  amount  which  the  land  holders  would  take  under 
the  present  system  greater  than  the  interest  upon  the 
purchase  price  of  the  land  at  present  rates,  but  this  would 
be  only  a  future  gain,  and  in  the  meanwhile  there  would 
not  only  be  no  relief,  but  the  burden  imposed  upon  labor 
and  capital  for  the  benefit  of  the  present  land  holders 
would  be  much  increased.  For  one  of  the  elements  in  the 
present  market  value  of  land  is  the  expectation  of  future 
increase  of  value,  and  thus,  to  buy  up  the  lands  at  market 
rates  and  pay  interest  upon  the  purchase  money  would 
be  to  saddle  producers  not  only  with  the  payment  of 
actual  rent,  but  with  the  payment  in  full  of  speculative 
rent.  Or  to  put  it  in  another  way:  The  land  would  be 
purchased  at  prices  calculated  upon  a  lower  than  the  or- 
dinary rate  of  interest  (for  the  prospective  increase  in 
land  values  always  makes  the  market  price  of  land  much 
greater  than  would  be  the  price  of  anything  else  yielding 
the  same  present  return),  and  interest  upon  the  purchase 
money  would  be  paid  at  the  ordinary  rate.  Thus,  not 
only  all  that  the  land  yields  them  now  would  have  to  be 
paid  the  land  owners,  but  a  considerably  larger  amount. 
It  would  be,  virtually,  the  state  taking  a  perpetual  lease 
from  the  present  land  holders  at  a  considerable  advance 
in  rent  over  what  they  now  receive.  For  the  present  the 
state  would  merely  become  the  agent  of  the  land  holders 
in  the  collection  of  their  rents,  and  would  have  to  pay 
over  to  them  not  only  what  they  received,  but  considerably 
more. 

Mr.  Mill's  plan  for  nationalizing  the  future  "unearned 
increase  in  the  value  of  land,"  by  fixing  the  present 
market  value  of  all  lands  and  appropriating  to  the  state 
future  increase  in  value,  would  not  add  to  the  injustice 
of  the  present  distribution  of  wealth,  but  it  would  not 
remedy  it.  Further  speculative  advance  of  rent  would 
cease,  and  in  the  future  the  people  at  large  would  gain 
the  diiierence  between  the   increase  of  rent  and  the 


360  JUSTICE  OF  THE   REMEDY.  Booh  VJL 

amount  at  which  that  increase  was  estimated  in  fixing 
the  present  value  of  land,  in  which,  of  course,  prospec- 
tive, as  well  as  present,  value  is  an  element.  But  it 
would  leave,  for  all  the  future,  one  class  in  possession  of 
the  enormous  advantage  over  others  which  they  now 
have.  All  that  can  be  said  of  this  plan  is,  that  it  might 
be  better  than  nothing. 

Such  inefficient  and  impracticable  schemes  may  do  to 
talk  about,  where  any  proposition  more  efficacious  would 
not  at  present  be  entertained,  and  their  discussion  is  a 
hopeful  sign,  as  it  shows  the  entrance  of  the  thin  end  of 
the  wedge  of  truth.  Justice  in  men's  mouths  is  cring- 
ingly  humble  when  she  first  begins  a  protest  against  a 
time-honored  wrong,  and  we  of  the  English-speaking 
nations  still  wear  the  collar  of  the  Saxon  thrall,  and  have 
been  educated  to  look  upon  the  "vested  rights**  of  land 
owners  with  all  the  superstitious  reverence  that  ancient 
Egyptians  looked  upon  the  crocodile.  But  when  the 
times  are  ripe  for  them,  ideas  grow,  even  though  insig- 
nificant in  their  first  appearance.  One  day,  the  Third 
Estate  covered  their  heads  when  the  king  put  on  his  hat. 
A  little  while  thereafter,  and  the  head  of  a  son  of  St. 
Louis  rolled  from  the  scaffold.  The  anti-slavery  move- 
ment in  the  United  States  commenced  with  talk  of  com- 
pensating owners,  but  when  four  millions  of  slaves  were 
emancipated,  the  owners  got  no  compensation,  nor  did 
they  clamor  for  any.  And  by  the  time  the  people  of  any 
such  country  as  England  or  the  United  States  are  suffi- 
ciently aroused  to  the  injustice  and  disadvantages  of  indi- 
vidual ownership  of  land  to  induce  them  to  attempt  its 
nationalization,  they  will  be  sufficiently  aroused  to  nation- 
alize it  in  a  much  more  direct  and  easy  way  than  by  pur- 
chase. They  will  not  trouble  themselves  about  compen- 
sating the  proprietors  of  land. 

Nor  is  it  right  that  there  should  be  any  concern  about 
the  proprietors  of  land.     That  such  a  man  as  John  Stuart 


Chap.  m.    CLAIM  OF  LAND  OWNERS  TO  COMPENSAIION.      361 

Mill  should  have  attached  so  much  importance  to  the 
compensation  of  land  owners  as  to  have  urged  the  confis- 
cation merely  of  the  future  increase  in  rent,  is  explain- 
able only  by  his  acquiescence  in  the  current  doctrines  that 
wages  are  drawn  from  capital  and  that  population  con- 
stantly tends  to  press  upon  subsistence.  These  blinded 
him  as  to  the  full  effects  of  the  private  appropriation  of 
land.  He  saw  that  **the  claim  of  the  land  holder  is  alto- 
gether subordinate  to  the  general  policy  of  the  state," 
and  that  "when  private  property  in  land  is  not  expedi- 
ent, it  is  unjust,"*  but,  entangled  in  the  toils  of  the  Mal- 
thusian  doctrine,  he  attributed,  as  he  expressly  states  in 
a  paragraph  I  have  previously  quoted,  the  want  and  suf- 
fering that  he  saw  around  him  to  "the  niggardliness  of 
nature,  not  to  the  injustice  of  man,"  and  thus  to  him  the 
nationalization  of  land  seemed  comparatively  a  little 
thing,  that  could  accomplish  nothing  toward  the  eradica- 
tion of  pauperism  and  the  abolition  of  want — ends  that 
could  be  reached  only  as  men  learned  to  repress  a  natural 
instinct.  Great  as  he  was  and  pure  as  he  was — warm 
heart  and  noble  mind — he  yet  never  saw  the  true  har- 
mony of  economic  laws,  nor  realized  how  from  this  one 
great  fundamental  wrong  flow  want  and  misery,  and  vice 
and  shame.  Else  he  could  never  have  written  this  sen- 
tence: "The  land  of  Ireland,  the  land  of  every  country, 
belongs  to  the  people  of  that  country.  The  individuals 
called  land  owners  have  no  right  in  morality  and  justice 
to  anything  but  the  rent,  or  compensation  for  its  salable 
value." 

In  the  name  of  the  Prophet — figs!  If  the  land  of  any 
country  belong  to  the  people  of  that  country,  what  right, 
in  morality  and  justice,  have  the  individuals  called  land 
owners  to  the  rent?    If  the  land  belong  to  the  people, 

♦Principles  of  Political  Economy,  Book  I,  Chap.  2,  Sec.  6.     >f 

■{•i 


362  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIL 

why  in  the  name  of  morality  and  justice  should  the  peo- 
ple pay  its  salable  value  for  their  own? 

Herbert  Spencer  says:*  "Had  we  to  deal  with  the 
parties  who  originally  robbed  the  human  race  of  its  heri- 
tage, we  might  make  short  work  of  the  matter?"  Why 
not  make  short  work  of  the  matter  anyhow?  For  this 
robbery  is  not  like  the  robbery  of  a  horse  or  a  sum  of 
money,  that  ceases  with  the  act.  It  is  a  fresh  and  con- 
tinuous robbery,  that  goes  on  every  day  and  every  hour. 
It  is  not  from  the  produce  of  the  past  that  rent  is 
drawn;  it  is  from  the  produce  of  the  present.  It  is  a 
toll  levied  upon  labor  constantly  and  continuously. 
Every  blow  of  the  hammer,  every  stroke  of  the  pick, 
every  thrust  of  the  shuttle,  every  throb  of  the  steam 
engine,  pay  it  tribute.  It  levies  upon  the  earnings  of 
the  men  who,  deep  under  ground,  risk  their  lives,  and  of 
those  who  over  white  surges  hang  to  reeling  masts;  it 
claims  the  just  reward  of  the  capitalist  and  the  fruits  of 
the  inventor's  patient  effort;  it  takes  little  children  from 
play  and  from  school,  and  compels  them  to  work  before 

*  Social  Statics,  page  142.  [It  may  be  well  to  say  in  the  new  re- 
print of  this  book  (1897)  that  this  and  all  other  references  to  Herbert 
Spencer's  "  Social  Statics  "  are  from  the  edition  of  that  book  pub 
lishedby  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York,  with  his  consent,  from  1864 
to  1892.  At  that  time  "  Social  Statics  "  was  repudiated,  and  a  new 
edition  under  the  name  of  "Social  Statics,  abridged  and  revised,"  has 
taken  its  place.  From  this,  all  that  the  first  Social  Statics  had  said 
in  denial  of  property  in  land  has  been  eliminated,  and  it  of  course 
contains  nothing  here  referred  to.  Mr.  Spencer  has  also  been  driven 
by  the  persistent  heckling  of  the  English  single  tax  men,  who 
insisted  on  asking  him  the  questions  suggested  in  the  first  Social 
Statics,  to  bring  out  a  small  volume,  entitled  "Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
on  the  Land  Question,"  in  which  are  reprinted  in  parallel  columns 
Chapter  IX  of  Social  Statics,  with  what  he  considers  valid  answers 
to  himself  as  given  in  "  Justice,"  1891.  This  has  also  been  reprinted 
by  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  and  constitutes,  I  think,  the  very  funniest  an- 
swer to  himself  ever  made  by  a  man  who  claimed  to  be  a  philoso- 
pher.] 


Chap.  III.    CLAIM  OF  LAND  OWNERS  TO  COMPENSATION.      363 

their  bones  are  hard  or  their  muscles  are  firm;  it  robs  the 
shivering  of  warmth;  the  hungry,  of  food;  the  sick,  of 
medicine;  the  anxious,  of  peace.  It  debases,  and  em- 
brutes,  and  embitters.  It  crowds  families  of  eight  and 
ten  into  a  single  squalid  room;  it  herds  like  swine  agri- 
cultural gangs  of  boys  and  girls;  it  fills  the  gin  palace 
and  groggery  with  those  who  have  no  comfort  in  their 
homes;  it  makes  lads  who  might  be  useful  men  candi- 
dates for  prisons  and  penitentiaries;  it  fills  brothels  with 
girls  who  might  have  known  the  pure  joy  of  motherhood; 
it  sends  greed  and  all  evil  passions  prowling  through  so- 
ciety as  a  hard  winter  drives  the  wolves  to  the  abodes  of 
men;  it  darkens  faith  in  the  human  soul,  and  across  the 
reflection  of  a  just  and  merciful  Creator  draws  the  veil  of 
a  hard,  and  blind,  and  cruel  fate! 

It  is  not  merely  a  robbery  in  the  past;  it  is  a  robbery 
in  the  present — a  robbery  that  deprives  of  their  birth- 
right the  infants  that  are  now  coming  into  the  world! 
Why  should  we  hesitate  about  making  short  work  of  such 
a  system?  Because  I  was  robbed  yesterday,  and  the  day 
before,  and  the  day  before  that,  is  it  any  reason  that  I 
should  suffer  myself  to  be  ro-bbed  to-day  and  to-morrow? 
any  reason  that  I  should  conclude  that  the  robber  has 
acquired  a  vested  right  to  rob  me? 

If  the  land  belong  to  the  people,  why  continue  to  per- 
mit land  owners  to  take  the  rent,  or  compensate  them  in 
any  manner  for  the  loss  of  rent?  Consider  what  rent  is. 
It  does  not  arise  spontaneously  from  land;  it  is  due  to 
nothing  that  the  land  owners  have  done.  It  represents 
a  value  created  by  the  whole  community.  Let  the  land 
holders  have,  if  you  please,  all  that  the  possession  of  the 
land  would  give  them  in  the  absence  of  the  rest  of  the 
community.  But  rent,  the  creation  of  the  whole  com- 
munity, necessarily  belongs  to  the  whole  community. 

Try  the  case  of  the  land  holders  by  the  maxims  of  the 
common  law  by  which  the  rights  of  man  and  man  are  de- 


364  JUSTICE  OF  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  VU. 

termined.     The  common  law  we  are  told  is  the  perfection 
of  reason,  and  certainly  the  land  owners  cannot  complain 
of  its  decision,  for  it  has  been  built  up  by  and  for  land 
owners.     Now  what  does  the  law  allow  to  the  innocent 
possessor  when  the  land  for  which  he  paid  his  money  is 
adjudged  rightfully  to  belong  to  another?    Nothing  at 
all.     That  he  purchased  in  good  faith  gives  him  no  right 
or  claim  whatever.     The  law  does  not  concern  itself  with 
the  "intricate  question  of  compensation"  to  the  innocent 
purchaser.     The  law  does  not  say,  as  John  Stuart  Mill 
says:  "The  land  belongs  to  A,   therefore  B  who  has 
thought  himself  the  owner  has  no  right  to  anything  but 
the  rent,  or  compensation  for  its  salable  value."     For 
that  would  be  indeed  like  a  famous  fugitive  slave  case 
decision  in  which  the  Court  was  said  to  have  given  the 
law  to  the  North  and  the  nigger  to  the  South.     The  law 
simply  says:  "The  land  belongs  to  A,  let  the  Sheriff  put 
him  in  possession!"     It  gives  the  innocent  purchaser  of 
a  wrongful  title  no  claim,  it  allows  him  no  compensation. 
And  not  only  this,  it  takes  from  him  all  the  improve- 
ments that  he  has  in  good  faith  made  upon  the  land. 
You  may  have  paid  a  high  price  for  land,  making  every 
exertion  to  see  that  the  title  is  good;  you  may  have  held 
it  in  undisturbed  possession  for  years  without  thought  or 
hint  of  an  adverse  claimant;  made  it  fruitful  by  your  toil 
or  Erected  upon  it  a  costly  building  of  greater  value  than 
the  land  itself,  or  a  modest  home  in  which  you  hope,  sur- 
rounded by  the  fig-trees  you  have  planted  and  the  vines 
you  have  dressed,  to  pass  your  declining  days;  yet  if 
Quirk,  Gammon  &  Snap  can  mouse  out  a  technical  flaw 
in  your  parchments  or  hunt  up  some  forgotten  heir  who 
never  dreamed  of  his  rights,  not  merely  the  land,  but  all 
your  improvements,  may  be  taken  away  from  you.     And 
not  merely  that.     According  to  the  common  law,  when 
you  have  surrendered  the  land  and  given  up  your  im- 
provements, you  may  be  called  upon  to  account  for  the 


Cauxp.  III.   CLAIM  OF  LAND  OAVNERS  TO  COMPEKSATION.       365 

profits  you  derived  from  the  land  during  the  time  you 
had  it. 

Now  if  we  apply  to  this  case  of  The  People  vs.  The  Land 
Owners  the  same  maxims  of  justice  that  have  been  for- 
mulated by  land  owners  into  law,  and  are  applied  every  day 
in  English  and  American  courts  to  disputes  between  man 
and  man,  we  shall  not  only  not  think  of  giving  the  land 
holders  any  compensation  for  the  land,  but  shall  take  all 
the  improvements  and  whatever  else  they  may  have  as 
well. 

But  I  do  not  propose,  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  any 
one  else  will  propose,  to  go  so  far.  It  is  sufficient  if  the 
people  resume  the  ownership  of  the  land.  Let  the  land 
owners  retain  their  improvements  and  personal  property 
in  secure  possession. 

And  in  this  measure  of  justice  would  be  no  oppression, 
no  injury  to  any  class.  The  great  cause  of  the  present 
unequal  distribution  of  wealth,  with  the  suffering,  deg- 
radation, and  waste  that  it  entails,  would  be  swept  away. 
Even  land  holders  would  share  in  the  general  gain.  The 
gain  of  even  the  large  land  holders  would  be  a  real  one. 
The  gain  of  the  small  land  holders  would  be  enormous. 
For  in  welcoming  Justice,  men  welcome  the  handmaid  of 
Love,  Peace  and  Plenty  follow  in  her  train,  bringing 
their  good  gifts,  not  to  some,  but  to  all. 

How  true  this  is,  we  shall  hereafter  see. 

If  in  this  chapter  I  have  spoken  of  justice  and  expedi- 
ency as  if  justice  were  one  thing  and  expediency  another, 
it  has  been  merely  to  meet  the  objections  of  those  who  so 
talk.    In  justice  is  the  highest  and  truest  expediency. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PRIVATE   PROPERTY   IN   LAND  HISTORICALLY  CONSIDERED. 

What  more  than  anything  else  prevents  the  realization 
of  the  essential  injustice  of  private  property  in  land  and 
stands  in  the  way  of  a  candid  consideration  of  any  prop- 
osition for  abolishing  it,  is  that  mental  habit  which 
makes  anything  that  has  long  existed  seem  natural  and 
necessary. 

We  are  so  used  to  the  treatment  of  land  as  individual 
property,  it  is  so  thoroughly  recognized  in  our  laws,  man- 
ners, and  customs,  that  the  vast  majority  of  people  never 
think  of  questioning  it;  but  look  upon  it  as  necessary  to 
the  use  of  land.  They  are  unable  to  conceive,  or  at  least 
it  does  not  enter  their  heads  to  conceive,  of  society  as  ex- 
isting or  as  possible  without  the  reduction  of  land  to 
private  possession.  The  first  step  to  the  cultivation  or 
improvement  of  land  seems  to  them  to  get  for  it  a  par- 
ticular owner,  and  a  man's  land  is  looked  on  by  them  as 
fully  and  as  equitably  his,  to  sell,  to  lease,  to  give,  or  to 
bequeath,  as  his  house,  his  cattle,  his  goods,  or  his  fur- 
niture. The  "sacredness  of  property"  has  been  preached 
so  constantly  and  effectively,  especially  by  those  "con- 
servators of  ancient  barbarism,"  as  Voltaire  styled  the 
lawyers,  that  most  people  look  upon  the  private  owner- 
ship of  land  as  the  very  foundation  of  civilization,  and  if 
the  resumption  of  land  as  common  property  is  suggested, 
think  of  it  at  first  blush  either  as  a  chimerical  vagary, 
which  never  has  and  never  can  be  realized,  or  as  a  prop- 
osition to  overturn  society  from  its  base  and  bring  about 
a  reversion  to  barbarism. 


Oiap.lV.  PROPERTY  IN  LAND  CONSIDERED.        367 

If  it  were  true  that  land  had  always  been  treated  as 
private  property,  that  would  not  prove  the  justice  or 
necessity  of  continuing  so  to  treat  it,  any  more  than  the 
universal  existence  of  slavery,  which  might  once  have 
been  safely  affirmed,  would  prove  the  justice  or  necessity 
of  making  property  of  human  flesh  and  blood. 

Not  long  ago  monarchy  seemed  all  but  universal,  and 
not  only  the  kings  but  the  majority  of  their  subjects 
really  believed  that  no  country  could  get  along  without  a 
king.  Yet,  to  say  nothing  of  America,  France  now  gets 
along  without  a  king;  the  Queen  of  England  and  Em- 
press of  India  has  about  as  much  to  do  with  governing 
her  realms  as  the  wooden  figurehead  of  a  ship  has  in 
determining  its  course,  and  the  other  crowned  heads 
of  Europe  sit,  metaphorically  speaking,  upon  barrels  of 
nitro-glycerine. 

Something  over  a  hundred  years  ago.  Bishop  Butler, 
author  of  the  famous  Analogy,  declared  that  "a  constitu- 
tion of  civil  government  without  any  religious  establish- 
ment is  a  chimerical  project  of  which  there  is  no  exam- 
ple." As  for  there  being  no  example,  he  was  right.  No 
government  at  that  time  existed,  nor  would  it  have  been 
easy  to  name  one  that  ever  had  existed,  without  some 
sort  of  an  established  religion;  yet  in  the  United  States 
we  have  since  proved  by  the  practice  of  a  century  that  it 
is  possible  for  a  civil  government  to  exist  without  a  state 
church. 

But  while,  were  it  true,  that  land  had  always  and 
everywhere  been  treated  as  private  property  would  not 
prove  that  it  should  always  be  so  treated,  this  is  not  true. 
On  the  contrary,  the  common  right  to  land  has  every- 
where been  primarily  recognized,  and  private  ownership 
has  nowhere  grown  up  save  as  the  result  of  usurpation. 
The  primary  and  persistent  perceptions  of  mankind  are 
that  all  have  an  equal  right  to  land,  and  the  opinion  that 
private  property  in  land  is  necessary  to  society  is  but  an 


368  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VII. 

offspring  of  ignorance  that  cannot  look  beyond  its  imme- 
diate surroundings — an  idea  of  comparatively  modern 
growth,  as  artificial  and  as  baseless  as  that  of  the  right 
divine  of  kings. 

The  observations  of  travelers,  the  researches  of  the 
critical  historians  who  within  a  recent  period  have  done 
so  much  to  reconstruct  the  forgotten  records  of  the  peo- 
ple, the  investigations  of  such  men  as  Sir  Henry  Maine, 
Emile  de  Laveleye,  Professor  Nasse  of  Bonn,  and  others, 
into  the  growth  of  institutions,  prove  that  wherever  hu- 
man society  has  formed,  the  common  right  of  men  to  the 
use  of  the  earth  has  been  recognized,  and  that  nowhere 
has  unrestricted  individual  ownership  been  freely  adopted. 
Historically,  as  ethically,  private  property  in  land  is  rob- 
bery. It  nowhere  springs  from  contract;  it  can  nowhere 
be  traced  to  perceptions  of  justice  or  expediency;  it  has 
everywhere  had  its  birth  in  war  and  conquest,  and  in  the 
selfish  use  which  the  cunning  have  made  of  superstition 
and  law. 

Wherever  we  can  trace  the  early  history  of  society, 
whether  in  Asia,  in  Europe,  in  Africa,  in  America,  or  in 
Polynesia,  land  has  been  considered,  as  the  necessary  re- 
lations which  human  life  has  to  it  would  lead  to  its  con- 
sideration— as  common  property,  in  which  the  rights  of 
all  who  had  admitted  rights  were  equal.  That  is  to  say, 
that  all  members  of  the  community,  all  citizens,  as  we 
should  say,  had  equal  rights  to  the  use  and  enjoyment  of 
the  land  of  the  community.  This  recognition  of  the 
common  right  to  land  did  not  prevent  the  full  recogni- 
tion of  the  particular  and  exclusive  right  in  things  which 
are  the  result  of  labor,  nor  was  it  abandoned  when  the 
development  of  agriculture  had  imposed  the  necessity  of 
recognizing  exclusive  possession  of  land  in  order  to  secure 
the  exclusive  enjoyment  of  the  results  of  the  labor  ex- 
pended in  cultivating  it.  The  division  of  land  between 
the  industrial  units^  whether  families,  joint  families,  or 


Chap,  IV.  PROPERTY   TS   LAND   CONSIDERED.  369 

individuals,  went  only  as  far  as  was  necessary  for  that 
purpose,  pasture  and  forest  lands  being  retained  as  com- 
mon, and  equality  as  to  agricultural  land  being  secured, 
either  by  a  periodical  re-division,  as  among  the  Teutonic 
races,  or  by  the  prohibition  of  alienation,  as  in  the  law  of 
Moses. 

This  primary  adjustment  still  exists,  in  more  or  less 
intact  form,  in  the  village  communities  of  India,  Russia, 
and  the  Sclavonic  countries  yet,  or  until  recently,  sub- 
jected to  Turkish  rule;  in  the  mountain  cantons  of  Swit- 
zerland; among  the  Kabyles  in  the  north  of  Africa,  and 
the  Kaffirs  in  the  south;  among  the  native  population  of 
Java,  and  the  aborigines  of  New  Zealand — that  is  to  say, 
wherever  extraneous  influences  have  left  intact  the  form 
of  primitive  social  organization.  That  it  everywhere  ex- 
isted has  been  within  late  years  abundantly  proved  by  the 
researches  of  many  independent  students  and  observers, 
and  which  are,  to  my  knowledge,  best  summarized  in  the 
"Systems  of  Land  Tenures  in  Various  Countries,"  pub- 
lished under  authority  of  the  Cobden  Club,  and  in  M. 
Emile  de  Laveleye's  "Primitive  Property,"  to  which  I 
would  refer  the  reader  who  desires  to  see  this  truth  dis- 
played in  detail. 

"In  all  primitive  societies,"  says  M.  de  Laveleye,  as 
the  result  of  an  investigation  which  leaves  no  part  of  the 
world  unexplored — "in  all  primitive  societies,  the  soil 
was  the  joint  property  of  the  tribes  and  was  subject  to 
periodical  distribution  among  all  the  families,  so  that  all 
might  live  by  their  labor  as  nature  has  ordained.  The 
comfort  of  each  was  thus  proportioned  to  his  energy  and 
intelligence;  no  one,  at  any  rate,  was  destitute  of  the 
means  of  subsistence,  and  inequality  increasing  from 
generation  to  generation  was  provided  against." 

If  M.  de  Laveleye  be  right  in  this  conclusion,  and  that 
he  is  right  there  can  be  no  doubt,  how,  it  will  be  asked, 
has  the  reduction  of  land  to  private  ownership  become  so 
general? 


370  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIL 

The  causes  which  have  operated  to  supplant  this  orig- 
inal idea  of  the  equal  right  to  the  use  of  land  by  the  idea 
of  exclusive  and  unequal  rights  may,  I  think,  be  every- 
where vaguely  but  certainly  traced.  They  are  every- 
where the  same  which  have  led  to  the  denial  of  equal 
personal  rights  and  to  the  establishment  of  privileged 
classes. 

These  causes  may  be  summarized  as  the  concentration 
of  power  in  the  hands  of  chieftains  and  the  military 
class,  consequent  on  a  state  of  warfare,  which  enabled 
them  to  monopolize  common  lands;  the  effect  of  con- 
quest, in  reducing  the  conquered  to  a  state  of  predial 
slavery,  and  dividing  their  lands  among  the  conquerors, 
and  in  disproportionate  share  to  the  chiefs;  the  differ- 
entiation and  influence  of  a  sacerdotal  class,  and  the 
differentiation  and  influence  of  a  class  of  professional 
lawyers,  whose  interests  were  served  by  the  substitution 
of  exclusive,  in  place  of  common,  property  in  land* 
— inequality  once  produced  always  tending  to  greater 
inequality,  by  the  law  of  attraction. 

It  was  the  struggle  between  this  idea  of  equal  rights  to 
the  soil  and  the  tendency  to  monopolize  it  in  individual 
possession,  that  caused  the  internal  conflicts  of  Greece 
and  Home;  it  was  the  check  given  to  this  tendency — in 
Greece  by  such  institutions  as  those  of  Lycurgus  and 
Solon,  and  in  Eome  by  the  Licinian  Law  and  subsequent 
divisions  of  land — that  gave  to  each  their  days  of 
strength  and  glory;  and  it  was  the  final  triumph  of  this 
tendency  that  destroyed  both.  Great  estates  ruined 
Greece,  as  afterward  * 'great  estates  ruined  Italy,"!  and 

*  The  influence  of  the  lawyers  has  been  very  marked  in  Europe, 
both  on  the  continent  and  in  Great  Britain,  in  destroying  all  vestiges 
of  the  ancient  tenure,  and  substituting  the  idea  of  the  Roman  law, 
exclusive  ownership. 

f  Latifundia  perdidere  Italiam. — Pliny. 


ehap.lV.  PSOPERTT  IK   LAND   CONSIDERED.  371 

as  the  soil,  in  spite  of  the  warnings  of  great  legislators 
and  statesmen,  passed  finally  into  the  possession  of  a  few, 
population  declined,  art  sank,  the  intellect  became  emas- 
culate, and  the  race  in  which  humanity  had  attained  its 
most  splendid  development  became  a  by-word  and  re- 
proach among  men. 

The  idea  of  absolute  individual  property  in  land,  which 
modern  civilization  derived  from  Rome,  reached  its  full 
development  there  in  historic  times.  When  the  future 
mistress  of  the  world  first  looms  up,  each  citizen  had  his 
little  homestead  plot,  which  was  inalienable,  and  the  gen- 
eral domain — "the  corn-land  which  was  of  public  right" 
— was  subject  to  common  use,  doubtless  under  regula- 
tions or  customs  which  secured  equality,  as  in  the  Teu- 
tonic mark  and  Swiss  allmend.  It  was  from  this  public 
domain  constantly  extended  by  conquest,  that  the  patri- 
cian families  succeeded  in  carving  their  great  estates. 
These  great  estates  by  the  power  with  which  the  great 
attracts  the  less,  in  spite  of  temporary  checks  by  legal 
limitation  and  recurring  divisions,  finally  crushed  out  all 
the  small  proprietors,  adding  their  little  patrimonies  to 
the  latifundia  of  the  enormously  rich,  while  they  them- 
selves were  forced  into  the  slave  gangs,  became  rent-pay- 
ing colonii,  or  else  were  driven  into  the  freshly  conquered 
foreign  provinces,  where  land  was  given  to  the  veterans 
of  the  legions;  or  to  the  metropolis,  to  swell  the  ranks  of 
the  proletariat  who  had  nothing  to  sell  but  their  votes. 

CaBsarism,  soon  passing  into  an  unbridled  despotism  of 
the  Eastern  type,  was  the  inevitable  political  result,  and 
the  empire,  even  while  it  embraced  the  world,  became  in 
reality  a  shell,  kept  from  collapse  only  by  the  healthier 
life  of  the  frontiers,  where  the  land  had  been  divided 
among  military  settlers  or  the  primitive  usages  longer 
survived.  But  the  latifundia,  which  had  devoured  the 
strength  of  Italy,  crept  steadily  outward,  carving  the 
surface  of  Sicily,  Africa,  Spain,  and  Gaul  into  great 


378  JUSTICB  OP  THE  KEMEDT.  BookVlL 

estates  cultivated  by  slaves  or  tenants.  The  hardy  vir- 
tues born  of  personal  independence  died  out,  an  exhaus- 
tive agriculture  impoverished  the  soil,  and  wild  beasts 
supplanted  men,  until  at  length,  with  a  strength  nur- 
tured in  equality,  the  barbarians  broke  through;  Rome 
perished;  and  of  a  civilization  once  so  proud  nothing  was 
left  but  ruins. 

Thus  came  to  pass  that  marvelous  thing,  which  at  the 
time  of  Rome's  grandeur  would  have  seemed  as  impos- 
sible as  it  seems  now  to  us  that  the  Comanches  or  Flat- 
heads  should  conquer  the  United  States,  or  the  Lap- 
landers should  desolate  Europe.  The  fundamental  cause 
is  to  be  sought  in  the  tenure  of  land.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  denial  of  the  common  right  to  land  had  resulted  in 
decay;  on  the  other,  equality  gave  strength. 

"Freedom,"  says  M.  de  Laveleye  ("Primitive  Prop- 
erty," p.  116),  "freedom,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the 
ownership  of  an  undivided  share  of  the  common  prop- 
erty, to  which  the  head  of  every  family  in  the  clan  was 
equally  entitled,  were  in  the  German  village  essential 
rights.  This  system  of  absolute  equality  impressed  a  re- 
markable character  on  the  individual,  which  explains 
how  small  bands  of  barbarians  made  themselves  masters 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  in  spite  of  its  skillful  adminis- 
tration, its  perfect  centralization  and  its  civil  law,  which 
has  preserved  the  name  of  written  reason." 

It  was,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  heart  was  eaten  out 
of  that  great  empire.  "Rome  perished,"  says  Professor 
Seeley,  "from  the  failure  of  the  crop  of  men." 

In  his  lectures  on  the  "History  of  Civilization  in  Eu- 
rope," and  more  elaborately  in  his  lectures  on  the  "His-  ^ 
tory  of  Civilization  in  France,"  IM^  Guizot  has  vividly  de- 
scribed the  chaos  that  in  Europe  succeeded  the  fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire — a  chaos  which,  as  he  says,  "carried  all 
things  in  its  bosom,"  and  from  which  the  structure  of 
modern  society  was  slowly  evolved.    It  is  a  picture  which 


Chap^  IV.  PBOPERTY   IN   LAND   CONSIDEBED.  373 

cannot  be  compressed  into  a  few  lines,  but  suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  result  of  this  infusion  of  rude  but  vigorous 
life  into  Romanized  society  was  a  disorganization  of  the 
German,  as  well  as  the  Roman  structure — both  a  blend- 
ing and  an  admixture  of  the  idea  of  common  rights  in 
the  soil  with  the  idea  of  exclusive  property,  substantially 
as  occurred  in  those  provinces  of  the  Eastern  Empire  sub- 
sequently overrun  by  the  Turks.  The  feudal  system, 
which  was  so  readily  adopted  and  so  widely  spread,  was 
the  result  of  such  a  blending;  but  underneath,  and  side 
by  side  with  the  feudal  system,  a  more  primitive  organiza- 
tion, based  on  the  common  rights  of  the  cultivators,  took 
root  or  revived,  and  has  left  its  traces  all  over  Europe. 
This  primitive  organization,  which  allots  equal  shares  of 
cultivated  ground  and  the  common  use  of  uncultivated 
ground,  and  which  existed  in  Ancient  Italy  as  in  Saxon 
England,  has  maintained  itself  beneath  absolutism  and 
serfdom  in  Russia,  beneath  Moslem  oppression  in  Servia, 
and  in  India  has  been  swept,  but  not  entirely  destroyed, 
by  wave  after  wave  of  conquest,  and  century  after  cen- 
tury of  oppression. 

The  feudal  system,  which  is  not  peculiar  to  Europe, 
but  seems  to  be  the  natural  result  of  the  conquest  of  a 
settled  country  by  a  race  among  whom  equality  and  indi- 
viduality are  yet  strong,  clearly  recognized,  in  theory  at 
least,  that  the  land  belongs  to  society  at  large,  not  to  the 
individual.  Rude  outcome  of  an  age  in  which  might 
stood  for  right  as  nearly  as  it  ever  can  (for  the  idea  of 
right  is  ineradicable  from  the  human  mind,  and  must  in 
some  shape  show  itself  even  in  the  association  of  pirates 
and  robbers),  the  feudal  system  yet  admitted  in  no  one 
the  uncontrolled  and  exclusive  right  to  land.  A  fief  was 
essentially  a  trust,  and  to  enjoyment  was  annexed  obliga- 
tion. The  sovereign,  theoretically  the  representative  of 
the  collective  power  and  rights  of  the  whole  people,  was 
in  feudal  view  the  only  absolute  owner  of  land.     And 


374  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  Vll. 

though  land  was  granted  to  individual  possession,  yet  in 
its  possession  were  involved  duties,  by  which  the  enjoyer 
of  its  revenues  was  supposed  to  render  back  to  the  com- 
monwealth an  equivalent  for  the  benefits  which  from  the 
delegation  of  the  common  right  he  received. 

In  the  feudal  scheme  the  crown  lands  supported  public 
expenditures  which  are  now  included  in  the  civil  list;  the 
church  lands  defrayed  the  cost  of  public  worship  and  in- 
struction, of  the  care  of  the  sick  and  of  the  destitute, 
and  maintained  a  class  of  men  who  were  supposed  to  be, 
and  no  doubt  to  a  great  extent  were,  devoting  their  lives 
to  purposes  of  public  good;  while  the  military  tenures 
provided  for  the  public  defense.  In  the  obligation  under 
which  the  military  tenant  lay  to  bring  into  the  field  such 
and  such  a  force  when  need  should  be,  as  well,  as  in  the 
aid  he  had  to  give  when  the  sovereign's  eldest  son  was 
knighted,  his  daughter  married,  or  the  sovereign  himself 
made  prisoner  of  war,  was  a  rude  and  inefficient  recogni- 
tion, but  still  unquestionably  a  recognition,  of  the  fact, 
obvious  to  the  natural  perceptions  of  all  men,  that  land 
is  not  individual  but  common  property. 

Nor  yet  was  the  control  of  the  possessor  of  land  allowed 
to  extend  beyond  his  own  life.  Although  the  principle 
of  inheritance  soon  displaced  the  principle  of  selection, 
as  where  power  is  concentrated  it  always  must,  yet  feudal 
law  required  that  there  should  always  be  some  represen- 
tative of  a  fief,  capable  of  discharging  the  duties  as  well 
as  of  receiving  the  benefits  which  were  annexed  to  a 
landed  estate,  and  who  this  should  be  was  not  left  to  in- 
dividual caprice,  but  rigorously  determined  in  advance. 
Hence  wardship  and  other  feudal  incidents.  The  system 
of  primogeniture  and  its  outgrowth,  the  entail,  were  in 
their  beginnings  not  the  absurdities  they  afterward 
became. 

The  basis  of  the  feudal  system  was  the  absolute  own- 
ership of  the  land,  an  idea  which  the  barbarians  readily 


Chap.  IV.  PEOPBRTT   12f   LA2TD    CONSIDEKBD.  375 

acquired  in  the  midst  of  a  conquered  population  to  whom 
it  was  familiar;  but  over  this,  feudalism  threw  a  superior 
right,  and  the  process  of  infeudation  consisted  of  bring- 
ing individual  dominion  into  subordination  to  the  supe- 
rior dominion,  which  represented  the  larger  community 
or  nation.  Its  units  were  the  land  owners,  who  by  virtue 
of  their  ownership  were  absolute  lords  on  their  own  do- 
mains, and  who  there  performed  the  office  of  protection 
which  M.  Taine  has  so  graphically  described,  though  per- 
haps with  too  strong  a  coloring,  in  the  opening  chapter 
of  his  "Ancient  Eegime."  The  work  of  the  feudal  sys- 
tem was  to  bind  together  these  units  into  nations,  and  to 
subordinate  the  powers  and  rights  of  the  individual  lords 
of  land  to  the  powers  and  rights  of  collective  society,  as 
represented  by  the  suzerain  or  king. 

Thus  the  feudal  system,  in  its  rise  and  development, 
was  a  triumph  of  the  idea  of  the  common  right  to  land, 
changing  an  absolute  tenure  into  a  conditional  tenure, 
and  imposing  peculiar  obligations  in  return  for  the  priv- 
ilege of  receiving  rent.  And  during  the  same  time,  the 
power  of  land  ownership  v/a^  trenched,  as  it  were,  from 
below,  the  tenancy  at  will  of  the  cultivators  of  the  soil 
very  generally  hardening  into  tenancy  by  custom,  and 
the  rent  which  the  lord  could  exact  from  the  peasant 
becoming  fixed  and  certain. 

And  amid  the  feudal  system  there  remained,  or  there 
grew  up,  communities  of  cultivators,  more  or  less  subject 
to  feudal  dues,  who  tilled  the  soil  as  common  property; 
and  although  the  lords,  where  and  when  they  had  the 
power,  claimed  pretty  much  all  they  thought  worth 
claiming,  yet  the  idea  of  common  right  was  strong 
enough  to  attach  itself  by  custom  to  a  considerable  part 
of  the  land.  The  commons,  in  feudal  ages,  must  have 
embraced  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  area  of  most  Eu- 
ropean countries.  For  in  France  (although  the  appro- 
priations of  these  lands  by  the  aristocracy,  occasionally 


376  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIL 

checked  and  rescinded  by  royal  edict,  had  gone  on  for 
some  centuries  prior  to  the  Revolution,  and  during  the 
Revolution  and  First  Empire  large  distributions  and  sales 
were  made),  the  common  or  communal  lands  still 
amount,  according  to  M.  de  Laveleye,  to  4,000,000  hec- 
tares, or  9,884,400  acres.  The  extent  of  the  common 
land  of  England  during  the  feudal  ages  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  though  inclosures  by  the  landed  aris- 
tocracy began  during  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.,  it  is  stated 
that  no  less  than  7,660,413  acres  of  common  lands  were 
inclosed  under  Acts  passed  between  1710  and  1843,  of 
which  600,000  acres  have  been  inclosed  since  1845;  and 
it  is  estimated  that  there  still  remain  2,000,000  acres  of 
common  in  England,  though  of  course  the  most  worth- 
less parts  of  the  soil. 

In  addition  to  these  common  lands,  there  existed  in 
France,  until  the  Revolution,  and  in  parts  of  Spain,  until 
our  own  day,  a  custom  having  all  the  force  of  law,  by 
which  cultivated  lands,  after  the  harvest  had  been 
gathered,  became  common  for  purposes  of  pasturage  or 
travel,  until  the  time  had  come  to  use  the  ground  again; 
and  in  some  places  a  custom  by  which  any  one  had  the 
right  to  go  upon  ground  which  its  owner  neglected  to  cul- 
tivate, and  there  to  sow  and  reap  a  crop  in  security.  And 
if  he  chose  to  use  manure  for  the  first  crop,  he  acquired 
the  right  to  sow  and  gather  a  second  crop  without  let  or 
hindrance  from  the  owner. 

It  is  not  merely  the  Swiss  allmend,  the  Ditmarsh  mark, 
the  Servian  and  Russian  village  communities;  not  merely 
the  long  ridges  which  on  English  ground,  now  the  ex- 
clusive property  of  individuals,  still  enable  the  antiqua- 
rian to  trace  out  the  great  fields  in  ancient  time  devoted 
to  the  triennial  rotation  of  crops,  and  in  which  each  vil- 
lager was  annually  allotted  his  equal  plot;  not  merely  the 
documentary  evidence  which  careful  students  have  within 
late  years  drawn  from  old  records;  but  the  very  institu- 


Chap.  IV.  PROPEETY  IN   LAND   CONSIDERED.  377 

tions  under  which  modern  civilization  has  developed, 
which  prove  the  universality  and  long  persistence  of  the 
recognition  of  the  common  right  to  the  use  of  the  soil. 

There  still  remain  in  our  legal  systems  survivals  that 
have  lost  their  meaning,  that,  like  the  still  existing  re- 
mains of  the  ancient  commons  of  England,  point  to  this. 
The  doctrine  of  eminent  domain,  existing  as  well  in  Mo- 
hammedan law,  which  makes  the  sovereign  theoretically 
the  only  absolute  owner  of  land,  springs  from  nothing 
but  the  recognition  of  the  sovereign  as  the  representative 
of  the  collective  rights  of  the  people;  primogeniture  and 
entail,  which  still  exist  in  England,  and  which  existed 
in  some  of  the  American  States  a  hundred  years  ago,  are 
but  distorted  forms  of  what  was  once  an  outgrowth  of 
the  apprehension  of  land  as  common  property.  The  very 
distinction  made  in  legal  terminology  between  real  and 
personal  property  is  but  the  survival  of  a  primitive  dis- 
tinction between  what  was  originally  looked  upon  as  com- 
mon property  and  what  from  its  nature  was  always  con- 
sidered the  peculiar  property  of  the  individual.  And  the 
greater  care  and  ceremony  which  are  yet  required  for  the 
transfer  of  land  is  but  a  survival,  now  meaningless  and 
useless,  of  the  more  general  and  ceremonious  consent  once 
required  for  the  transfer  of  rights  which  were  looked 
upon,  not  as  belonging  to  any  one  member,  but  to  every 
member  of  a  family  or  tribe. 

The  general  course  of  the  development  of  modern 
civilization  since  the  feudal  period  has  been  to  the  sub- 
version of  these  natural  and  primary  ideas  of  collective 
ownership  in  the  soil.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  appear,  the 
emergence  of  liberty  from  feudal  bonds  has  been  accom- 
panied by  a  tendency  in  the  treatment  of  land  to  the  form 
of  ownership  which  involves  the  enslavement  of  the  work- 
ing classes,  and  which  is  now  beginning  to  be  strongly 
felt  all  over  the  civilized  world,  in  the  pressure  of  an  iron 
yoke,  which  cannot  be  relieved  by  any  extension  of  mere 


378  JUSTICE  09  THfi  ItElitEBT.  Book  Vil. 

political  power  or  personal  liberty,  and  which  political 
economists  mistake  for  the  pressure  of  natural  laws,  and 
workmen  for  the  oppressions  of  capital. 

This  is  clear — that  in  Great  Britain  to-day  the  right  of 
the  people  as  a  whole  to  the  soil  of  their  native  country  is 
much  less  fully  acknowledged  than  it  was  in  feudal 
times.  A  much  smaller  proportion  of  the  people  own  the 
soil,  and  their  ownership  is  much  more  absolute.  The 
commons,  once  so  extensive  and  so  largely  contributing  to 
the  independence  and  support  of  the  lower  classes,  have, 
all  but  a  small  remnant  of  yet  worthless  land,  been  ap- 
propriated to  individual  ownership  and  inclosed;  the 
great  estates  of  the  church,  which  were  essentially  com- 
mon property  devoted  to  a  public  purpose,  have  been  di- 
verted from  that  trust  to  enrich  individuals;  the  dues  of 
the  military  tenants  have  been  shaken  off,  and  the  cost  of 
maintaining  the  military  establishment  and  paying  the 
interest  upon  an  immense  debt  accumulated  by  wars  has 
been  saddled  upon  the  whole  people,  in  taxes  upon  the 
necessaries  and  comforts  of  life.  The  crown  lands  have 
mostly  passed  into  private  possession,  and  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  royal  family  and  all  the  petty  princelings  who 
marry  into  it,  the  British  workman  must  pay  in  the 
price  of  his  mug  of  beer  and  pipe  of  tobacco.  The  Eng- 
lish yeoman — the  sturdy  breed  who  won  Crecy,  and  Poic- 
tiers,  and  Agincourt — is  as  extinct  as  the  mastodon.  The 
Scottish  clansman,  whose  right  to  the  soil  of  his  native 
hills  was  then  as  undisputed  as  that  of  his  chieftain,  has 
been  driven  out  to  make  room  for  the  sheep  ranges  or 
deer  parks  of  that  chieftain's  descendant;  the  tribal  right 
of  the  Irishman  has  been  turned  into  a  tenancy-at-will. 
Thirty  thousand  men  have  legal  power  to  expel  the 
whole  population  from  five-sixths  of  the  British  Islands, 
and  the  vast  majority  of  the  British  people  have  no  right 
whatever  to  their  native  land  save  to  walk  the  streets  or 
trudge  the  roads.     To  them  may  be  fittingly  applied  the 


Chap.JV.  PEOPEETY   IN  ULCfD   COKSIDEEED.  379 

words  of  a  Tribune  of  the  Koman  People:  ^'Meno/Rome/* 
said  Tiberius  Gracchus — "7nen  of  Rome,  you  are  called 
the  lords  of  the  world,  yet  have  no  right  to  a  square  foot 
of  its  soil !  The  wild  beasts  have  their  dens,  but  the  sol- 
diers of  Italy  have  only  water  and  air!'* 

The  result  has,  perhaps,  been  more  marked  in  England 
than  anywhere  else,  but  the  tendency  is  observable  every- 
where, having  gone  further  in  England  owing  to  circum- 
stances which  have  developed  it  with  greater  rapidity. 

The  reason,  I  take  it,  that  with  the  extension  of  the 
idea  of  personal  freedom  has  gone  on  an  extension  of  the 
idea  of  private  property  in  land,  is  that  as  in  the  progress 
of  civilization  the  grosser  forms  of  supremacy  connected 
with  land  ownership  were  dropped,  or  abolished,  or  be- 
came less  obvious,  attention  was  diverted  from  the  more 
insidious,  but  really  more  potential  forms,  and  the  land 
owners  were  easily  enabled  to  put  property  in  land  on 
the  same  basis  as  other  property. 

The  growth  of  national  power,  either  in  the  form  of 
royalty  or  parliamentary  government,  stripped  the  great 
lords  of  individual  power  and  importance,  and  of  their 
jurisdiction  and  power  over  persons,  and  so  repressed 
striking  abuses,  as  the  growth  of  Koman  Imperialism 
repressed  the  more  striking  cruelties  of  slavery.  The 
disintegration  of  the  large  feudal  estates,  which,  until 
the  tendency  to  concentration  arising  from  the  modern 
tendency  to  production  upon  a  large  scale  is  strongly  felt, 
operated  to  increase  the  number  of  land  owners,  and  the 
abolition  of  the  restraints  by  which  land  owners  when 
population  was  sparser  endeavored  to  compel  laborers  to 
remain  on  their  estates  also  contributed  to  draw  away  at- 
tention from  the  essential  injustice  involved  in  private 
property  in  land;  while  the  steady  progress  of  legal  ideas 
drawn  from  the  Roman  law,  which  has  been  the  great 
mine  and  storehouse  of  modern  jurisprudence,  tended  to 
level  the  natural  distinction  between  property  in  land 


380  JUSTICE  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Booh  VIL 

and  property  in  other  things.  Thus,  with  the  extension 
of  personal  liberty,  went  on  an  extension  of  individual 
proprietorship  in  land. 

The  political  power  of  the  barons  was,  moreover,  not 
broken  by  the  revolt  of  the  classes  who  could  clearly  feel 
the  injustice  of  land  ownership.  Such  revolts  took  place, 
again  and  again;  but  again  and  again  were  they  repressed 
with  terrific  cruelties.  What  broke  the  power  of  the 
barons  was  the  growth  of  the  artisan  and  trading  classes, 
between  whose  wages  and  rent  there  is  not  the  same 
obvious  relation.  These  classes,  too,  developed  under  a 
system  of  close  guilds  and  corporations,  which,  as  I  have 
previously  explained  in  treating  of  trade  combinations 
and  monopolies,  enabled  them  somewhat  to  fence  them- 
selves in  from  the  operation  of  the  general  law  of  wages, 
and  which  were  much  more  easily  maintained  than  now, 
when  the  effect  of  improved  methods  of  transportation, 
and  the  diffusion  of  rudimentary  education  and  of  cur- 
rent news,  is  steadily  making  population  more  mobile. 
These  classes  did  not  see,  and  do  not  yet  see,  that  the 
tenure  of  land  is  the  fundamental  fact  which  must  ulti- 
mately determine  the  conditions  of  industrial,  social,  and 
political  life.  And  so  the  tendency  has  been  to  assimi- 
late the  idea  of  property  in  land  with  that  of  property  in 
things  of  human  production,  and  even  steps  backward 
have  been  taken,  and  been  hailed,  as  steps  in  advance. 
The  French  Constituent  Assembly,  in  1789,  thought  it 
was  sweeping  away  a  relic  of  tyranny  when  it  abolished 
tithes  and  imposed  the  support  of  the  clergy  on  general 
taxation.  The  Abb6  Sieyds  stood  alone  when  he  told 
them  that  they  were  simply  remitting  to  the  proprietors 
a  tax  which  was  one  of  the  conditions  on  which  they  held 
their  lands,  and  reimposing  it  on  the  labor  of  the  nation. 
But  in  vain.  The  Abbe  Siey^s,  being  a  priest,  was  looked 
on  as  defending  the  interests  of  his  order,  when  in  truth 
he  was  defending  the  rights  of  man.     In  those  tithes. 


Chap.  IV.  PROPERTY   I2f   LAND   COKSIDERED.  381 

the  French  people  might  have  retained  a  large  public  rev- 
enue which  would  not  have  taken  one  centime  from  the 
wag3s  of  labor  or  the  earnings  of  capital. 

And  so  the  abolition  of  the  military  tenures  in  England 
by  the  Long  Parliament,  ratified  after  the  accession  of 
Charles  IL,  though  simply  an  appropriation  of  public 
revenues  by  the  feudal  land  holders,  who  thus  got  rid  of 
the  consideration  on  which  they  held  the  common  prop- 
erty of  the  nation,  and  saddled  it  on  the  people  at  large, 
in  the  taxation  of  all  consumers,  has  long  been  charac- 
terized, and  is  still  held  up  in  the  law  books,  as  a  triumph 
of  the  spirit  of  freedom.  Yet  here  is  the  source  of  the 
immense  debt  and  heavy  taxation  of  England.  Had  the 
form  of  these  feudal  dues  been  simply  changed  into  one 
better  adapted  to  the  changed  times,  English  wars  need 
never  have  occasioned  the  incurring  of  debt  to  the 
amount  of  a  single  pound,  and  the  labor  and  capital  of 
England  need  not  have  been  taxed  a  single  farthing  for 
the  maintenance  of  a  military  establishment.  All  this 
would  have  come  from  rent,  which  the  land  holders  since 
that  time  have  appropriated  to  themselves — from  the  tax 
which  land  ownership  levies  on  the  earnings  of  labor  and 
capital.  The  land  holders  of  England  got  their  land  on 
terms  which  required  them  even  in  the  sparse  population 
of  Norman  days  to  put  in  the  field,  upon  call,  sixty  thou- 
sand perfectly  equipped  horsemen,*  and  on  the  further 
condition  of  various  fines  and  incidents  which  amounted 
to  a  considerable  part  of  the  rent.  It  would  probably  be 
a  low  estimate  to  put  the  pecuniary  value  of  these  vari- 
ous services  and  dues  at  one-half  the  rental  value  of  the 
land.     Had  the  land  holders  been  kept  to  this  contract 

*  Andrew  Bisset,  in  "The  Strength  of  Nations,"  London,  1859,  a 
suggestive  work  in  which  he  calls  the  attention  of  the  English  people 
to  this  measure  by  which  the  land  owners  avoided  the  payment  of 
their  rent  to  the  nation,  disputes  the  statement  of  Blackstone  that  a 
knight's  service  was  but  for  40  days,  and  says  it  was  during  necessity. 


382  JUSTICE  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  Vll. 

and  no  land  been  permitted  to  be  inclosed  except  upon 
similar  terms,  the  income  accruing  to  the  nation  from 
English  land  would  to-day  be  greater  by  many  millions 
than  the  entire  public  revenues  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
England  to-day  might  have  enjoyed  absolute  free  trade. 
There  need  not  have  been  a  customs  duty,  an  excise, 
license,  or  income  tax,  yet  all  the  present  expenditures 
could  be  met,  and  a  large  surplus  remain  to  be  devoted 
to  any  purpose  which  would  conduce  to  the  comfort  or 
well-being  of  the  whole  people. 

Turning  back,  wherever  there  is  light  to  guide  us,  we 
may  everywhere  see  that  in  their  first  perceptions,  all 
peoples  have  recognized  the  common  ownership  in  land, 
and  that  private  property  is  an  usurpation,  a  creation  of 
force  and  fraud. 

As  Madame  de  Stael  said,  "Liberty  is  ancient."  Jus- 
tice, if  we  turn  to  the  most  ancient  records,  will  always  be 
found  to  have  the  title  of  prescription. 


CHAPTER  V. 

OF  PROPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  civilization  we  see  that  land  is 
everywhere  regarded  as  common  property.  And,  turn- 
ing from  the  dim  past  to  our  own  times,  we  may  see  that 
natural  perceptions  are  still  the  same,  and  that  when 
placed  under  circumstances  in  which  the  influence  of  ed- 
ucation and  habit  is  weakened,  men  instinctively  recog- 
nize the  equality  of  right  to  the  bounty  of  nature. 

The  discovery  of  gold  in  California  brought  together 
in  a  new  country  men  who  had  been  used  to  look  on  land 
as  the  rightful  subject  of  individual  property,  and  of 
whom  probably  not  one  in  a  thousand  had  ever  dreamed 
of  drawing  any  distinction  between  property  in  land  and 
property  in  anything  else.  But,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  these  men  were  brought 
into  contact  with  land  from  which  gold  could  be  obtained 
by  the  simple  operation  of  washing  it  out. 

Had  the  land  with  which  they  were  thus  called  upon  to 
deal  been  agricultural,  or  grazing,  or  forest  land,  of 
peculiar  richness;  had  it  been  land  which  derived  peculiar 
value  from  its  situation  for  commercial  purposes,  or  by 
reason  of  the  water  power  which  it  affordea;  or  even  had 
it  contained  rich  mines  of  coal,  iron  or  lead,  the  land 
system  to  which  they  had  been  used  would  have  been 
applied,  and  it  would  have  been  reduced  to  private  owner- 
ship in  large  tracts,  as  even  the  pueblo  lands  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, really  the  most  valuable  in  the  State,  which  by 
Spanish  law  had  been  set  apart  to  furnish  homes  for  the 
future  residents  of  that  city,  were  reduced,  without  any 


384  JUSTICE  OF  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  VIL 

protest  worth  speaking  of.  But  the  novelty  of  the  case 
broke  through  habitual  ideas,  and  threw  men  back  upon 
first  principles,  and  it  was  by  common  consent  declared 
that  this  gold-bearing  land  should  remain  common  prop- 
erty, of  which  no  one  might  take  more  than  he  could  rea- 
sonably use,  or  hold  for  a  longer  time  than  he  continued 
to  use  it.  This  perception  of  natural  justice  was  ac- 
quiesced in  by  the  General  Government  and  the  courts, 
and  while  placer  mining  remained  of  importance,  no  at- 
tempt was  made  to  overrule  this  reversion  to  primitive 
ideas.  The  title  to  the  land  remained  in  the  govern- 
ment, and  no  individual  could  acquire  more  than  a  pos- 
sessory claim.  The  miners  in  each  district  fixed  tlie 
amount  of  ground  an  individual  could  take  and  the 
amount  of  work  that  must  be  done  to  constitute  use.  If 
this  work  were  not  done,  any  one  could  re-locate  the 
ground.  Thus,  no  one  was  allowed  to  forestall  or  to  lock 
up  natural  resources.  Labor  was  acknowledged  as  the 
creator  of  wealth,  was  given  a  free  field,  and  secured  in 
its  reward.  The  device  would  not  have  assured  complete 
equality  of  rights  under  the  conditions  that  in  most  coun- 
tries prevail;  but  under  the  conditions  that  there  and 
then  existed — a  sparse  population,  an  unexplored  coun- 
try, and  an  occupation  in  its  nature  a  lottery,  it  secured 
substantial  justice.  One  man  might  strike  an  enormously 
rich  deposit,  and  others  might  vainly  prospect  for  months 
and  years,  but  all  had  an  equal  chance.  No  one  was  al- 
lowed to  play  the  dog  in  the  manger  with  the  bounty  of 
the  Creator.  The  essential  idea  of  the  mining  regula- 
tions was  to  prevent  forestalling  and  monopoly.  Upon 
the  same  principle  are  based  the  mining  laws  of  Mexico; 
and  the  same  principle  was  adopted  in  Australia,  in  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  and  in  the  diamond  fields  of  South  Africa, 
for  it  accords  with  natural  perceptions  of  justice. 

With  the  decadence  of  placer  mining  in  California,  the 
accustomed  idea  of  private  property  finally  prevailed  in 


Chap.  V.      PROPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       385 

the  passage  of  a  law  permitting  the  patenting  of  mineral 
lands.  The  only  effect  is  to  lock  up  opportunities — to 
give  the  owner  of  mining  ground  the  power  of  saying  that 
no  one  else  may  use  what  he  does  not  choose  to  use  him- 
self. And  there  are  many  cases  in  which  mining  ground 
is  thus  withheld  from  use  for  speculative  purposes,  just 
as  valuable  building  lots  and  agricultural  land  are  with- 
held from  use.  But  while  thus  preventing  use,  the  ex- 
tension to  mineral  land  of  the  same  principle  of  private 
ownership  which  marks  the  tenure  of  other  lands  has 
done  nothing  for  the  security  of  improvements.  The 
greatest  expenditures  of  capital  in  opening  and  develop- 
ing mines — expenditures  that  in  some  cases  amounted  to 
millions  of  dollars — were  made  upon  possessory  titles. 

Had  the  circumstances  which  beset  the  first  English 
settlers  in  North  America  been  such  as  to  call  their  at- 
tention de  novo  to  the  question  of  land  ownership,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  they  would  have  reverted  to  first 
principles,  juat  as  they  reverted  to  first  principles  in 
matters  of  government;  and  individual  Und  ownership 
would  have  been  rejected,  just  as  aristocracy  and  mon- 
archy were  rejected.  But  while  in  the  country  from 
which  they  came  this  system  had  not  yet  fully  developed 
itself,  nor  its  effects  been  fully  felt,^  the  fact  that  in  the 
new  country  an  immense  continent  invited  settlement 
prevented  any  question  of  the  justice  and  policy  of 
private  property  in  land  from  arising.  For  in  a  new  K 
country,  equality  seems  sufficiently  assured  if  no  one  is 
permitted  to  take  land  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest.  At 
first  no  harm  seems  to  be  done  by  treating  this  land  as 
absolute  property.  There  is  plenty  of  land  left  for  those 
who  choose  to  take  it,  and  the  slavery  that  in  a  later 
stage  of  development  necessarily  springs  from  the  in- 
dividual ownership  of  land  is  not  felt. 

In  Virginia  and  to  the  South,  where  the  settlement 
had  an  aristocratic  character,  the  natural  complement  of 


X' 


386  JUSTICE  OF  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  VJL 

the  large  estates  into  which  the  land  was  carved  was 
introduced  in  the  shape  of  negro  slaves.  But  the  first 
X  settlers  of  New  England  divided  the  land  as,  twelve  cen- 
turies before,  their  ancestors  had  divided  the  land  of 
Britain,  giving  to  each  head  of  a  family  his  town  lot  and 
his  seed  lot,  while  beyond  lay  the  free  commono  So  far 
as  concerned  the  great  proprietors  whom  the  English 
kings  by  letters  patent  endeavored  to  create,  the  settlers 
saw  clearly  enough  the  injustice  of  the  attempted  monop- 
oly, and  none  of  these  proprietors  got  much  from  their 
grants;  but  the  plentifulness  of  land  prevented  attentior 
from  being  called  to  the  monopoly  which  individual  land 
ownership,  even  when  the  tracts  are  small,  must  involve 
when  land  becomes  scarce.  And  so  it  has  come  to  pass 
that  the  great  republic  of  the  modern  world  has  adopted 
at  the  beginning  of  its  career  an  institution  that  ruined 
the  republics  of  antiquity;  that  a  people  who  proclaim 
the  inalienable  rights  of  all  men  to  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness  have  accepted  without  question  a 
principle  which,  in  denying  the  equal  and  inalienable 
right  to  the  soil,  finally  denies  the  equal  right  to  life  and 
liberty;  that  a  people  who  at  the  cost  of  a  bloody  war 
have  abolished  chattel  slavery,  yet  permit  slavery  in  a 
more  widespread  and  dangerous  form  to  take  root. 

The  continent  has  seemed  so  wide,  the  area  over  which 
population  might  yet  pour  so  vast,  that  familiarized  by 
habit  with  the  idea  of  private  property  in  land,  we  have 
not  realized  its  essential  injustice.  For  not  merely  has 
this  background  of  unsettled  land  prevented  the  full  effect 
of  private  appropriation  from  being  felt,  even  in  the  older 
sections,  but  to  permit  a  man  to  take  more  land  than  he 
could  use,  that  he  might  compel  those  who  afterwards 
needed  it  to  pay  him  for  the  privilege  of  using  it,  has  not 
seemed  so  unjust  when  others  in  their  turn  might  do  the 
same  thing  by  going  further  on.  And  more  than  this, 
the  very  fortunes  that  have  resulted  from  the  appropria- 


Chap.  V.      PROPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       387 

tion  of  land,  and  that  have  thus  really  been  drawn  from 
taxes  levied  upon  the  wages  of  labor,  have  seemed,  and 
have  been  heralded,  as  prizes  held  out  to  the  laborer. 
In  all  the  newer  States,  and  even  to  a  considerable  extent 
in  the  older  ones,  our  landed  aristocracy  is  yet  in  its  first 
generation.  Those  who  have  profited  by  the  increase  in 
the  value  of  land  have  been  largely  men  who  began  life 
without  a  cent.  Their  great  fortunes,  many  of  them 
running  up  high  into  the  millions,  seem  to  them,  and  to 
many  others,  as  the  best  proofs  of  the  justice  of  existing 
social  conditions  in  rewarding  prudence,  foresight,  in- 
dustry, and  thrift;  whereas,  the  truth  is  that  these  for- 
tunes are  but  the  gains  of  monopoly,  and  are  necessarily 
made  at  the  expense  of  labor.  But  the  fact  that  those 
thus  enriched  started  as  laborers  hides  this,  and  the 
same  feeling  which  leads  every  ticket  holder  in  a  lottery 
to  delight  in  imagination  in  the  magnitude  of  the  prizes 
has  prevented  even  the  poor  from  quarreling  with  a 
system  which  thus  made  many  poor  men  rich. 

In  short,  the  American  people  have  failed  to  see  the 
essential  injustice  of  private  property  in  land,  because  as 
yet  they  have  not  felt  its  full  effects.  This  public 
domain — the  vast  extent  of  land  yet  to  be  reduced  to 
private  possession,  the  enormous  common  to  which  the 
faces  of  the  energetic  were  always  turned,  has  been  the 
great  fact  that,  since  the  days  when  the  first  settlems/nts 
began  to  fringe  the  Atlantic  Coast,  has  formed  our 
national  character  and  colored  our  national  thought.  It 
is  not  that  we  have  eschewed  a  titled  aristocracy  and 
abolished  primogeniture;  that  we  elect  all  our  ofiBcers 
from  school  director  up  to  president;  that  our  laws  run 
in  the  name  of  tHe  people,  instead  of  in  the  name  of  a 
prince;  that  the  State  knows  no  religion,  and  our  judges 
wear  no  wigs — that  we  have  been  exempted  from  the  ills 
that  Fourth  of  July  orators  used  to  point  to  as  character- 
istic of  the  effete  despotisms  of  the  Old  World.    The 


388  JUSTICE  OF  THE  BEMEDY.  Booh  V7L 

general  intelligence,  the  general  comfort,  the  active  in* 
vention,  the  power  of  adaptation  and  assimilation,  the 
free,  independent  spirit,  the  energy  and  hopefulness  that 
have  marked  our  people,  are  not  causes,  but  results — they 
have  sprung  from  unfenced  land.  This  public  domain 
has  been  the  transmuting  force  which  has  turned  the 
thriftless,  unambitious  European  peasant  into  the  self- 
reliant  Western  farmer;  it  has  given  a  consciousness  of 
freedom  even  to  the  dweller  in  crowded  cities,  and  has 
been  a  well-spring  of  hope  even  to  those  who  have  never 
thought  of  taking  refuge  upon  it.  The  child  of  the 
people,  as  he  grows  to  manhood  in  Europe,  finds  all  the 
best  seats  at  the  banquet  of  life  marked  "taken,'*  and 
must  struggle  with  his  fellows  for  the  crumbs  that  fall, 
without  one  chance  in  a  thousand  of  forcing  or  sneaking 
his  way  to  a  seat.  In  America,  whatever  his  condition, 
there  has  always  been  the  consciousness  that  the  public 
domain  lay  behind  him;  and  the  knowledge  of  this  fact, 
acting  and  reacting,  has  penetrated  our  whole  national 
life,  giving  to  it  generosity  and  independence,  elasticity 
and  ambition.  All  that  we  are  proud  of  in  the  American 
character;  all  that  makes  our  conditions  and  institutions 
better  than  those  of  older  countries,  we  may  trace  to  the 
fact  that  land  has  been  cheap  in  the  United  States,  be- 
cause new  soil  has  been  open  to  the  emigrant. 

But  our  advance  has  reacfled  the  Pacific.  Further 
west  we  cannot  go,  and  incroasing  population  can  but 
expand  north  and  south  and  fill  up  what  has  been  passed 
over.  North,  it  is  already  filling  up  the  valley  of  the 
Red  Eiver,  pressing  into  that  of  the  Saskatchewan  and 
pre-empti.ng  Washington  Territory;  south,  it  is  covering 
Western  Texas  and  taking  up  the  arable  valleys  of  New 
Mexico  and  Arizona. 

The  republic  has  entered  upon  a  new  era,  an  era  in 
which  the  monopoly  of  the  land  will  tell  with  accelerat- 
ing effect.    The  great  fact  which  has  been  so  potent  is 


Chap.  V.       PROPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.      389 

ceasing  to  be.  The  public  domain  is  almost  gone — a 
very  few  years  will  end  its  influence,  already  rapidly  fail- 
ing. I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  will  be  no  publio 
domain.  For  a  long  time  to  come  there  will  be  millions 
of  acres  of  public  lands  carried  on  the  books  of  the  Land 
Department.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  best 
part  of  the  continent  for  agricultural  purposes  is  already 
overrun,  and  that  it  is  the  poorest  land  that  is  left.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  what  remains  comprises  the 
great  mountain  ranges,  the  sterile  deserts,  the  high 
plains  fit  only  for  grazing.  And  it  must  be  remembered 
that  much  of  this  land  which  figures  in  the  reports  as 
open  to  settlement  is  unsurveyed  land,  which  has  been 
appropriated  by  possessory  claims  or  locations  which  do 
not  appear  until  the  land  is  returned  as  surveyed.  Cali- 
fornia figures  on  the  books  of  the  Land  Department  as 
the  greatest  land  State  of  the  Union,  containing  nearly 
100,000,000  acres  of  public  land — something  like  one- 
twelfth  of  the  whole  public  domain.  Yet  so  much  of 
this  is  covered  by  railroad  grants  or  held  in  the  way  of 
which  I  have  spoken;  so  much  consists  of  untillable 
mountains  or  plains  which  require  irrigation;  so  much  is 
monopolized  by  locations  which  command  the  water,  that 
as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  difficult  to  point  the  immigrant 
to  any  part  of  the  State  where  he  can  take  up  a  farm  on 
which  he  can  settle  and  maintain  a  family,  and  so  men, 
weary  o.f  the  quest,  end  by  buying  land  or  renting  it  on 
shares.  It  is  not  that  there  is  any  real  scarcity  of  land 
in  California — for,  an  empire  in  herself,  California  will 
some  day  maintain  a  population  as  large  as  that  of  France 
— but  appropriation  has  got  ahead  of  the  settler  and 
manages  to  keep  just  ahead  of  him. 

Some  twelve  or  fifteen  years  ago  the  late  Ben  Wade  of 
Ohio  said,  in  a  speech  in  the  United  States  Senate,  that 
by  the  close  of  this  century  every  acre  of  ordinary  agricul- 
tural land  in  the  United  States  would  be  worth  150  in 


390  JUSTICB  OF  THB  BBMXDT.  Book  VIL 

gold.  It  is  already  clear  that  if  he  erred  at  all,  it  was  in 
overstating  the  time.  In  the  twenty-one  years  that  re- 
main <jf  the  present  century,  if  our  population  keep  on 
increasing  at  the  rate  which  it  has  maintained  since  the 
institution  of  the  government,  with  the  exception  of  the 
decade  which  included  the  civil  war,  there  will  be  an 
addition  to  our  present  population  of  something  like 
forty-five  millions,  an  addition  of  some  seven  millions 
more  than  the  total  population  of  the  United  States  as 
shown  by  the  census  of  1870,  and  nearly  half  as  much 
again  as  the  present  population  of  Great  Britain,  There 
is  no  question  about  the  ability  of  the  United  States  to 
support  such  a  population  and  many  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions more,  and,  under  proper  social  adjustments,  to 
support  them  in  increased  comfort;  but  in  view  of  such 
an  increase  of  population,  what  becomes  of  the  unappro- 
priated public  domain?  Practically  there  will  soon  cease 
to  be  any.  It  will  be  a  very  long  time  before  it  is  all  in 
use;  but  it  will  be  a  very  short  time,  as  we  are  going,  be- 
fore all  that  men  can  turn  to  use  will  have  an  owner. 

But  the  evil  effects  of  making  the  land  of  a  whole  peo- 
ple the  exclusive  property  of  some  do  not  wait  for  the 
final  appropriation  of  the  public  domain  to  show  them- 
selves. It  is  not  necessary  to  contemplate  them  in  the 
future;  we  may  see  them  in  the  present.  They  have 
grown  with  our  growth,  and  are  still  increasing. 

We  plow  new  fields,  we  open  new  mines,  we  found 
new  cities;  we  drive  back  the  Indian  and  exterminate 
the  buffalo;  we  girdle  the  land  with  iron  roads  and  lace 
the  air  with  telegraph  wires;  we  add  knowledge  to 
knowledge,  and  utilize  invention  after  invention;  we 
build  schools  and  endow  colleges;  yet  it  becomes  no 
easier  for  the  masses  of  our  people  to  make  a  living. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  becoming  harder.  The  wealthy  class 
is  becoming  more  wealthy;  but  the  poorer  class  is  be- 
coming more  dependent.     The   gulf  between  the  em- 


i 


Ckap.  V.    PBOPERTY  IN  LAND  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.        391 

ployed  and  the  employer  is  growing  wider;  social  con- 
trasts are  becoming  sharper;  as  liveried  carriages  appear, 
so  do  barefooted  children.  We  are  becoming  used  to 
talk  of  the  working  classes  and  the  propertied  classes; 
beggars  are  becoming  so  common  that  where  it  was  once 
thought  a  crime  little  short  of  highway  robbery  to  refuse 
food  to  one  who  asked  for  it,  the  gate  is  now  barred  and 
the  bulldog  loosed,  while  laws  are  passed  against  vagrants 
which  suggest  those  of  Henry  VIII. 

We  call  ourselves  the  most  progressive  people  on  earth. 
But  what  is  the  goal  of  our  progress,  if  these  are  its 
wayside  fruits? 

These  are  the  results  of  private  property  in  land — the 
effects  of  a  principle  that  must  act  with  increasing  and 
increasing  force.  It  is  not  that  laborers  have  increased 
faster  than  capital;  it  is  not  that  population  is  pressing 
against  subsistence;  it  is  not  that  machinery  has  made 
"work  scarce;"  it  is  not  that  there  is  any  real  antagonism 
between  labor  and  capital — it  is  simply  that  land  is  becom- 
ing more  valuable;  that  the  terms  on  which  labor  can 
obtain  access  to  the  natural  opportunities  which  alone 
enable  it  to  produce  are  becoming  harder  and  harder. 
The  public  domain  is  receding  and  narrowing.  Property 
in  land  is  concentrating.  The  proportion  of  our  people 
who  have  no  legal  right  to  the  land  on  which  they  live  is 
becoming  steadily  larger. 

Says  the  New  York  World:  "A  non-resident  pro- 
prietary, like  that  of  Ireland,  is  getting  to  be  the  char- 
acteristic of  large  farming  districts  in  New  England, 
adding  yearly  to  the  nominal  value  of  leasehold  farms; 
advancing  yearly  the  rent  demanded,  and  steadily  de- 
grading the  character  of  the  tenantry."  And  the 
Nation,  alluding  to  the  same  section,  says:  "Increased 
nominal  value  of  land,  higher  rents,  fewer  farms  occu- 
pied by  owners;  diminished  product;  lower  wages;  a 
more  ignorant  population;  increasing  number  of  women 


392  JUSTICE   OF  THE   EEMEDY.  Book  Va 

employed  at  hard,  outdoor  labor  (surest  sign  of  a  de ' 
dining  civilization),  and  a  steady  deterioration  in  the 
style  of  farming — these  are  the  conditions  described  by  a 
cumulative  mass  of  evidence  that  is  perfectly  irresistible.'* 

The  same  tendency  is  observable  in  the  new  States, 
where  the  large  scale  of  cultivation  recalls  the  latifundia 
that  ruined  ancient  Italy.  In  California  a  very  large 
proportion  of  the  farming  land  is  rented  from  year  to 
year,  at  rates  varying  from  a  fourth  to  even  half  the 
crop. 

The  harder  times,  the  lower  wages,  the  increasing 
poverty  perceptible  in  the  United  States  are  but  results 
of  the  natural  laws  we  have  traced — laws  as  universal  and 
as  irresistible  as  that  of  gravitation.  We  did  not  estab- 
lish the  republic  when,  in  the  face  of  principalities  and 
powers,  we  flung  the  declaration  of  the  inalienable  rights 
of  man;  we  shall  never  establish  the  republic  until  we 
practically  carry  out  that  declaration  by  securing  to  the 
poorest  child  born  among  us  an  equal  right  to  his  native 
soil!  We  did  not  abolish  slavery  when  we  ratified  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment;  to  abolish  slavery  we  must 
abolish  private  property  in  land!  Unless  we  come  back 
to  first  principles,  unless  we  recognize  natural  percep- 
tions of  equity,  unless  we  acknowledge  the  equal  right  of 
all  to  land,  our  free  institutions  will  be  in  vain;  our  com- 
mon schools  will  be  in  vain;  our  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions will  bat  add  to  the  force  that  presses  the  masses 
'^ownl 


BOOK  VIII. 

APPLICATION  OF  THE  REMEDY. 


CHAPTER  I. — PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IN  LAND  INCONSISTENT 
WITH  THE   BEST  USE  OF  LAND. 

CHAPTER  II. — HOW  EQUAL  RIGHTS  TO  THE  LAND  MAY  BE 
ASSERTED   AND   SECURED. 

CHAPTER  III. — ^THE  PROPOSITION  TRIED  BY  THE  CANONS 
OF  TAXATION. 

CHAPTER    IT. — INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS. 


Why  hesitate  ?    Ye  are  full-bearded  men. 

With  God-implanted  will,  and  courage  if 

Ye  dare  but  show  it.    Never  yet  was  will 

But  found  some  way  or  means  to  work  it  out, 

Nor  e'er  did  Fortune  frown  on  him  who  dared. 

Shall  we  in  presence  of  this  grievous  wrong. 

In  this  supremest  moment  of  all  time, 

Stand  trembling,  cowering,  when  with  one  bold  stroke 

These  groaning  millions  might  be  ever  free  ? — 

And  that  one  stroke  so  just,  so  greatly  good, 

So  level  with  the  happiness  of  man, 

That  all  the  angels  will  applaud  the  deed. 

—E.  R  Taylor. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PRIVATE  PROPERTY  IN  LAND  INCONSISTENT  WITH  THE 
BEST  USB  OF  LAND. 

There  is  a  delusion  resulting  from  the  tendency  to 
confound  the  accidental  with  the  essential— a  delusion 
which  the  law  writers  have  done  their  best  to  extend, 
and  political  economists  generally  have  acquiesced  in, 
rather  than  endeavored  to  expose — ^that  private  property 
in  land  is  necessary  to  the  proper  use  of  land,  and  that 
again  to  make  land  common  property  would  be  to  destroy 
civilization  and  revert  to  barbarism. 

This  delusion  may  be  likened  to  the  idea  which,  ac- 
cording to  Charles  Lamb,  so  long  prevailed  among  the 
Chinese  after  the  savor  of  roast  pork  had  been  accident- 
ally discovered  by  the  burning  down  of  Ho-ti's  hut — that 
to  cook  a  pig  it  was  necessary  to  set  fire  to  a  house.  But, 
though  in  Lamb's  charming  dissertation  it  was  required 
that  a  sage  should  arise  to  teach  people  that  they  might 
roast  pigs  without  burning  down  houses,  it  does  not  take 
a  sage  to  see  that  what  is  required  for  the  improvement 
of  land  is  not  absolute  ownership  of  the  land,  but  secur- 
ity for  the  improvements.  This  will  be  obvious  to  who- 
ever will  look  around  him.  While  thore  is  no  more 
necessity  for  making  a  man  the  absolute  and  exclusive 
owner  of  land,  in  order  to  induce  hira  to  improve  it,  than 
there  is  of  burning  down  a  house  in  order  to  cook  a  pig; 
while  the  making  of  land  private  property  is  as  rude, 
wasteful,  and  uncertain  a  device  for  securing  improve- 
ment, as  the  burning  down  of  a  house  is  a  rude,  waste- 
ful, and  uncertain  device  for  roasting  a  pig,  we  have  not 


396  APPLICATION  OF  THE  REMEDT.  Booh  VIII 

the  excuse  for  persisting  in  the  one  that  Lamb's  China- 
men had  for  persisting  in  the  other.  Until  the  sage 
arose  who  invented  the  rude  gridiron,  which  according 
to  Lamb,  preceded  the  spit  and  oven,  no  one  had  known 
or  heard  of  a  pig  being  roasted,  except  by  a  house  being 
burned.  But,  among  us,  nothing  is  more  common  than 
for  land  to  be  improved  by  those  who  do  not  own  it. 
The  greater  part  of  the  land  of  Great  Britain  is  culti- 
vated by  tenants,  the  greater  part  of  the  buildings  of 
London  are  built  upon  leased  ground,  and  even  in  the 
United  States  the  same  system  prevails  everywhere  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent.  Thus  it  is  a  common  matter  for 
use  to  be  separated  from  ownership. 

Would  not  all  this  land  be  cultivated  and  improved 
just  as  well  if  the  rent  went  to  the  State  or  municipality, 
as  now,  when  it  goes  to  private  individoals?  If  no 
private  ownership  in  land  were  acknowledged,  but  all 
land  were  held  in  this  way,  the  occupier  or  user  paying 
rent  to  the  State,  would  not  land  be  used  and  improved 
as  well  and  as  securely  as  now?  There  can  be  but  one 
answer:  Of  course  it  would.  Then  would  the  resumption 
of  land  as  common  property  in  nowise  interfere  with  the 
proper  use  and  improvement  of  land. 

What  is  necessary  for  the  use  of  land  is  not  its  private 
ownership,  but  the  security  of  improvements.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  say  to  a  man,  '*this  land  is  yours,"  in  order 
to  induce  him  to  cultivate  or  improve  it.  It  is  only  nec- 
essary to  say  to  him,  "whatever  your  labor  or  capital 
produces  on  this  land  shall  be  yours."  Give  a  man 
security  that  he  may  reap,  and  he  will  sow;  assure  him  of 
the  possession  of  the  house  he  wants  to  build,  and  he 
will  build  it.  These  are  the  natural  rewards  of  labor.  It 
is  for  the  sake  of  the  reaping  that  men  sow;  it  is  for  the 
sake  of  possessing  houses  that  men  build.  The  owner- 
ship of  land  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

It  was  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  this  security,  that  in 


Chap.  J.  0W2JEBSH1P  AKD  THE  USE  OF  LAND.  397 

the  beginning  of  the  feudal  period  so  many  of  the  smaller 
land  holders  surrendered  the  ownership  of  their  lands  to 
a  military  chieftain,  receiving  back  the  use  of  them  in 
fief  or  trust,  and  kneeling  bareheaded  before  the  lord, 
with  their  hands  between  his  hands,  swore  to  serve  him 
with  life,  and  limb,  and  worldly  honor.  Similar  in- 
stances of  the  giving  up  of  ownership  in  land  for  the 
sake  of  security  in  its  enjoyment  are  to  be  seen  in 
Turkey,  where  a  peculiar  exemption  from  taxation  and 
extortion  attaches  to  vakouf,  or  church  lands,  and  where 
it  is  a  common  thing  for  a  land  owner  to  sell  his  land  to 
a  mosque  for  a  nominal  price,  with  the  understanding 
that  he  may  remain  as  tenant  upon  it  at  a  fixed  rent. 

It  is  not  the  magic  of  property,  as  Arthur  Young  said, 
that  has  turned  Flemish  sands  into  fruitful  fields.  It  is 
the  magic  of  security  to  labor.  This  can  be  secured  in 
other  ways  than  making  land  private  property,  just  as 
the  heat  necessary  to  roast  a  pig  can  be  secured  in  other 
ways  than  by  burning  down  houses.  The  mere  pledge  of 
an  Irish  landlord  that  for  twenty  years  he  would  not 
claim  in  rent  any  share  in  their  cultivation  induced  Irish 
peasants  to  turn  a  barren  mountain  into  gardens;  on 
the  mere  security  of  a  fixed  ground  rent  for  a  term  of 
years  the  most  costly  buildings  of  such  cities  as  London 
and  New  York  are  erected  on  leased  ground.  If  we  give 
improvers  such  security,  we  may  safely  abolish  private 
property  in  land. 

The  complete  recognition  of  common  rights  to  land 
need  in  no  way  interfere  with  the  complete  recognition 
of  individual  right  to  improvements  or  produce.  Two 
men  may  own  a  ship  without  sawing  her  in  half.  The 
ownership  of  a  railway  may  be  divided  into  a  hundred 
thousand  shares,  and  yet  trains  be  run  with  as  much 
system  and  precision  as  if  there  were  but  a  single  owner. 
In  London,  joint  stock  companies  have  been  formed  to 
hold  and  manage  real  estate.    Everything  could  go  on  as 


398  APPLICATION  OF  THB  BEMEDT.  Book  VIJL 

now,  and  yet  the  common  right  to  land  be  fully  recog- 
nized by  appropriating  rent  to  the  common  benefit. 
There  is  a  lot  in  the  center  of  San  Francisco  to  which 
the  common  rights  of  the  people  of  that  city  are  yet 
legally  recognized.  This  lot  is  not  cut  up  into  infinites- 
imal pieces  nor  yet  is  it  an  unused  waste.  It  is  covered 
with  fine  buildings,  the  property  of  private  individuals, 
that  stand  there  in  perfect  security.  The  only  difference 
between  this  lot  and  those  around  it,  is  that  the  rent  of 
the  one  goes  into  the  common  school  fund,  the  rent  of 
the  others  into  private  pockets.  What  is  to  prevent  the 
land  of  a  whole  country  being  held  by  the  people  of  the 
country  in  this  way? 

It  would  be  difficult  to  select  any  portion  of  the  terri- 
tory of  the  United  States  in  which  the  conditions  com- 
monly taken  to  necessitate  the  reduction  of  land  to 
private  ownership  exist  in  higher  degree  than  on  the 
little  islets  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  in  the  Aleutian 
Archipelago,  acquired  by  the  Alaska  purchase  from 
Russia.  These  islands  are  the  breeding  places  of  the 
fur  seal,  an  animal  so  timid  and  wary  that  the  slightest 
fright  causes  it  to  abandon  its  accustomed  resort,  never 
to  return.  To  prevent  the  utter  destruction  of  this 
fishery,  without  which  the  islands  are  of  no  use  to  man, 
it  is  not  only  necessary  to  avoid  killing  the  females  and 
young  cubs,  but  even  such  noises  as  the  discharge  of  a 
pistol  or  the  barking  of  a  dog.  The  men  who  do  the 
killing  must  be  in  no  hurry,  but  quietly  walk  around 
among  the  seals  who  line  the  rocky  beaches,  until  the 
timid  animals,  so  clumsy  on  land  but  so  graceful  in 
water,  show  no  more  sign  of  fear  than  lazily  to  waddle 
out  of  the  way.  Then  those  who  can  be  killed  without 
diminution  of  future  increase  are  carefully  separated  and 
gently  driven  inland,  out  of  sight  and  hearing  of  the 
herds,  where  they  are  dispatched  with  clubs.  To  throw 
such  a  fishery  as  this  open  to  whoever  chose  to  go  and 


Chap.  I.  OWNERSHIP  AND  THE  USB  OF  LAKD.  399 

kill — which  wonld  make  it  to  the  interest  of  each  party 
to  kill  as  many  as  they  conld  at  the  time  without  refer- 
ence to  the  future — would  be  utterly  to  destroy  it  in  a 
few  seasons,  as  similar  fisheries  in  other  oceans  have 
been  destroyed.  But  it  is  not  necessary,  therefore,  to 
make  these  islands  private  property.  Though  for 
reasons  greatly  less  cogent,  the  great  public  domain  of 
the  American  people  has  been  made  over  to  private 
ownership  as  fast  as  anybody  could  be  got  to  take  it, 
these  islands  have  been  leased  at  a  rent  of  $317,500  per 
year,*  probably  not  very  much  less  than  they  could  have 
been  sold  for  at  the  time  of  the  Alaska  purchase.  They 
have  already  yielded  two  millions  and  a  half  to  the 
national  treasury,  and  they  are  still,  in  unimpaired  value 
(for  under  the  careful  management  of  the  Alaska  Fur 
Company  the  seals  increase  rather  than  diminish),  the 
common  property  of  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

So  far  from  the  recognition  of  private  property  in  land 
being  necessary  to  the  proper  use  of  land,  the  contrary  is 
the  case.  Treating  land  as  private  property  stands  in  the 
way  of  its  proper  use.  Were  land  treated  as  public 
property  it  would  be  used  and  improved  as  soon  as  there 
was  need  for  its  use  or  improvement,  but  being  treated 
as  private  property,  the  individual  owner  is  permitted  to 
prevent  others  from  using  or  improving  what  he  cannot 
or  will  not  use  or  improve  himself.  When  the  title  is  in 
dispute,  the  most  valuable  land  lies  unimproved  for 
years;  in  many  parts  of  England  improvement  is  stopped 
because,  the  estates  being  entailed,  no  security  to  im- 
provers can  be  given;  and  large  tracts  of  ground  which, 
were  they  treated  as  public  property,  would  be  covered 
with  buildings  and  crops,  are  kept  idle  to  gratify  the 

*  The  fixed  rent  under  the  lease  to  the  Alaska  Pur  Company  is 
$55,000  a  year,  with  a  payment  of  $2.62  1-2  on  each  skin,  which  on 
100,000  skins,  to  which  the  take  is  limited,  amounts  to  $262,500— a 
total  rent  of  $317,500. 


400  APPLICATION  OP  THE  EEMEDT.  BooJc  Vm. 

caprice  of  the  owner.  In  the  thickly  settled  parts  of  the 
United  States  there  is  enough  land  to  maintain  three  or 
four  times  our  present  population,  lying  unused,  because 
its  owners  are  holding  it  for  higher  prices,  and  im- 
migrants are  forced  past  this  unused  land  to  seek  homes 
where  their  labor  will  be  far  less  productive.  In  every 
city  valuable  lots  may  be  seen  lying  vacant  for  the  same 
reason.  If  the  best  use  of  land  be  the  test,  then  private 
property  in  land  is  condemned,  as  it  is  condemned  by 
every  other  consideration.  It  is  as  wasteful  and  uncer- 
tain a  mode  of  securing  the  proper  use  of  land  as  the 
burning  down  of  houses  is  of  roasting  pigs. 


CHAPTER  II. 

HOW  EQUAL  EIGHTS  TO  THE  LAND  MAY  BE  ASSERTED 
AND   SECUEED. 

We  have  traced  the  want  and  suffering  that  every- 
where prevail  among  the  working  classes,  the  recurring 
paroxysms  of  industrial  depression,  the  scarcity  of  em- 
ployment, the  stagnation  of  capital,  the  tendency  of 
wages  to  the  starvation  point,  that  exhibit  themselves 
more  and  more  strongly  as  material  progress  goes  on,  to 
the  fact  that  the  land  on  which  and  from  which  all  must 
live  is  made  the  exclusive  property  of  some. 

We  have  seen  that  there  is  no  possible  remedy  for  these 
evils  but  the  abolition  of  their  cause;  we  have  seen  that 
private  property  in  land  has  no  warrant  in  justice,  but 
stands  condemned  as  the  denial  of  natural  right — a  sub- 
version of  the  law  of  nature  that  as  social  development 
goes  on  must  condemn  the  masses  of  men  to  a  slavery  the 
hardest  and  most  degrading. 

We  have  weighed  every  objection,  and  seen  that  neither 
on  the  ground  of  equity  or  expediency  is  there  anything 
to  deter  us  from  making  land  common  property  by  con- 
fiscating rent. 

But  a  question  of  method  remains.  How  shall  we  do 
it? 

We  should  satisfy  the  law  of  justice,  we  should  meet 
all  economic  requirements,  by  at  one  stroke  abolishing 
all  private  titles,  declaring  all  land  public  property,  and 
letting  it  out  to  the  highest  bidders  in  lots  to  suit,  under 
such  conditions  as  would  sacredly  guard  the  private  right 
to  improvements. 

Thus  we  should  secure,  in  a  more  complex  state  of 


403  APPLICATION  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIII. 

society,  the  same  equality  of  rights  that  in  a  ruder  state 
were  secured  by  equal  partitions  of  the  soil,  and  by  giv- 
ing the  use  of  the  land  to  whoever  could  procure  the 
most  from  it,  we  should  secure  the  greatest  production. 

Such  a  plan,  instead  of  being  a  wild,  impracticable 
vagary,  has  (with  the  exception  that  he  suggests  com- 
pensation to  the  present  holders  of  land — undoubtedly  a 
careless  concession  which  he  upon  reflection  would  recon- 
sider) been  indorsed  by  no  less  eminent  a  thinker  than 
Herbert  Spencer,  who  ("Social  Statics,"  Chap.  IX,  Sec. 
8)  says  of  it; 

"  Such  a  doctrine  is  consistent  with  the  highest  state  of  civiliza- 
tion; may  be  carried  out  without  involving  a  community  of  goods, 
and  need  cause  no  very  serious  revolution  in  existing  arrangements. 
The  change  required  would  simply  be  a  change  of  landlords.  Sepa- 
rate ownership  would  merge  into  the  joint-stock  ownership  of  the 
public.  Instead  of  being  in  the  possession  of  individuals,  the  coun- 
try would  be  held  by  the  great  corporate  body — society.  Instead  of 
leasing  his  acres  from  an  isolated  proprietor,  the  farmer  would  lease 
them  from  the  nation.  Instead  of  paying  his  rent  to  the  agent  of 
Sir  John  or  his  Grace,  he  would  pay  it  to  an  agent  or  deputy  agent 
of  the  community.  Stewards  would  be  public  officials  instead  of 
private  ones,  and  tenancy  the  only  land  tenure.  A  state  of  things 
so  ordered  would  be  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  moral  law.  Under 
it  all  men  would  be  equally  landlords,  all  men  would  be  alike  free 
to  become  tenants.  •  *  *  Clearly,  therefore,  on  such  a  system, 
the  earth  might  be  enclosed,  occupied  and  cultivated,  in  entire  sub- 
ordination to  the  law  of  equal  freedom." 

But  such  a  plan,  though  perfectly  feasible,  does  not 
seem  to  me  the  best.  Or  rather  I  propose  to  accomplish 
the  same  thing  in  a  simpler,  easier,  and  quieter  way, 
than  that  of  formally  confiscating  all  the  land  and 
formally  letting  it  out  to  the  highest  bidders. 

To  do  that  would  involve  a  needless  shock  to  present 
customs  and  habits  of  thought — which  is  to  be  avoided. 

To  do  that  would  involve  a  needless  extension  of  gov- 
ernmental machinery — which  is  to  be  avoided. 


Chap.n.       HOW  EQUAL  BIGHTS  MAY  BE  AS8EETED.  403 

It  is  an  axiom  of  statesmanship,  which  the  successful 
founders  of  tyranny  have  understood  and  acted  upon — 
that  great  changes  can  best  be  brought  about  under  old 
forms.  We,  who  would  free  men,  should  heed  the  same 
truth.  It  is  the  natural  method.  When  nature  would 
make  a  higher  type,  she  takes  a  lower  one  and  develops 
it.  This,  also,  is  the  law  of  social  growth.  Let  us  work 
by  it.  With  the  current  we  may  glide  fast  and  far. 
Against  it,  it  is  hard  pulling  and  slow  progress. 

I  do  not  propose  either  to  purchase  or  to  confiscate 
private  property  in  land.  The  first  would  be  unjust; 
the  second,  needless.  Let  the  individuals  who  now  hold 
it  still  retain,  if  they  want  to,  possession  of  what  they 
are  pleased  to  call  their  land.  Let  them  continue  to  call 
it  their  land.  Let  them  buy  and  sell,  and  bequeath  and 
devise  it.  We  may  safely  leave  them  the  shell,  if  we 
take  the  kernel.  It  is  not  necessary  to  confiscate  land;  it 
is  only  necessary  to  confiscate  rent. 

Nor  to  take  rent  for  public  uses  is  it  necessary  that  the 
State  should  bother  with  the  letting  of  lands,  and  assume 
the  chances  of  the  favoritism,  collusion,  and  corruption 
this  might  involve.  It  is  not  necessary  that  any  new 
machinery  should  be  created.  The  machinery  already 
exists.  Instead  of  extending  it,  all  we  have  to  do  is  to 
simplify  and  reduce  it.  By  leaving  to  land  owners  a 
percentage  of  rent  which  would  probably  be  much  less 
than  the  cost  and  loss  involved  in  attempting  to  rent 
lands  through  State  agency,  and  by  making  use  of  this 
existing  machinery,  we  may,  without  jar  or  shock,  assert 
the  common  right  to  land  by  taking  rent  for  public  uses. 

We  already  take  some  rent  in  taxation.  We  have  only 
to  make  some  changes  in  our  modes  of  taxation  to  take 
it  all. 

What  I,  therefore,  propose,  as  the  simple  yet  sovereign 

» remedy,  which  will  raise  wages,  increase  the  earnings  of 

capital,  extirpate  pauperism,  abolish  poverty,  give  re- 


404  APPLICATION  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIU. 

munerative  employment  to  whoever  wishes  it,  afford  free 
scope  to  human  powers,  lessen  crime,  elevate  morals, 
and  taste,  and  intelligence,  purify  government  and  carry 
civilization  to  yet  nobler  heights,  is — to  appropriate  rent 
by  taxation. 

In  this  way  the  State  may  become  the  universal  land- 
lord without  calling  herself  so,  and  without  assuming  a 
single  new  function.  In  form,  the  ownership  of  land 
would  remain  just  as  now.  No  owner  of  land  need  be 
dispossessed,  and  no  restriction  need  be  placed  upon  the 
amount  of  land  any  one  could  hold.  For,  rent  being 
taken  by  the  State  in  taxes,  land,  no  matter  in  whose 
name  it  stood,  or  in  what  parcels  it  was  held,  would  be 
really  common  property,  and  every  member  of  the  com- 
munity would  participate  in  the  advantages  of  its  owner- 
ship. 

Now,  insomuch  as  the  taxation  of  rent,  or  land  values, 
must  necessarily  be  increased  just  as  we  abolish  other 
taxes,  we  may  put  the  proposition  into  practical  form  by 
proposing — 

To  abolish  all  taxation  save  that  upon  land  values. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  value  of  land  is  at  the  beginning 
of  society  nothing,  but  as  society  develops  by  the  in- 
crease of  population  and  the  advance  of  the  arts,  it 
becomes  greater  and  greater.  In  every  civilized  country, 
even  the  newest,  the  value  of  the  land  taken  as  a  whole  is 
suflBcient  to  bear  the  entire  expenses  of  government.  In 
the  better  developed  countries  it  is  much  more  than 
sufficient.  Hence  it  will  not  be  enough  merely  to  place 
all  taxes  upon  the  value  of  land.  It  will  be  necessary, 
where  rent  exceeds  the  present  governmental  revenues, 
commensurately  to  increase  the  amount  demanded  in 
taxation,  and  to  continue  this  increase  as  society  pro- 
gresses and  rent  advances.  But  this  is  so  natural  and 
easy  a  matter,  that  it  may  be  considered  as  involved,  or 
at  least  understood,  in  the  proposition  to  put  all  taxes 


Chap.n.       HOW  EQUAL  EIGHTS  MAY  BE  ASSERTED.  405 

on  the  value  of  land.  That  is  the  first  step,  upon  which 
the  practical  struggle  must  be  made.  When  the  hare  is 
once  caught  and  killed,  cooking  him  will  follow  as  a 
matter  of  course.  When  the  common  right  to  land  is  so 
far  appreciated  that  all  taxes  are  abolished  save  those 
which  fall  upon  rent,  there  is  no  danger  of  much  more 
than  is  necessary  to  induce  them  to  collect  the  public 
revenues  being  left  to  individual  land  holders. 

Experience  has  taught  me  (for  I  have  been  for  some 
years  endeavoring  to  popularize  this  proposition)  that 
wherever  the  idea  of  concentrating  all  taxation  upon  land 
values  finds  lodgment  suflScient  to  induce  consideration, 
it  invariably  makes  way,  but  that  there  are  few  of  the 
classes  most  to  be  benefited  by  it,  who  at  first,  or  even 
for  a  long  time  afterward,  see  its  full  significance  and 
power.  It  is  difficult  for  workingmen  to  get  over  the 
idea  that  there  is  a  real  antagonism  between  capital  and 
labor.  It  is  difficult  for  small  farmers  and  homestead 
owners  to  get  over  the  idea  that  to  put  all  taxes  on  the 
value  of  land  would  be  unduly  to  tax  them.  It  is  diffi- 
cult for  both  classes  to  get  over  the  idea  that  to  exempt 
capital  from  taxation  would  be  to  make  the  rich  richer, 
and  the  poor  poorer.  These  ideas  spring  from  confused 
thought.  But  behind  ignorance  and  prejudice  there  is 
a  powerful  interest,  which  has  hitherto  dominated  litera- 
ture, education,  and  opinion.  A  great  wrong  always 
dies  hard,  and  the  great  wrong  which  in  every  civilized 
country  condemns  the  masses  of  men  to  poverty  and 
want,  will  not  die  without  a  bitter  struggle. 

I  do  not  think  the  ideas  of  which  I  speak  can  be  enter- 
tained by  the  reader  who  has  followed  me  thus  far;  but 
inasmuch  as  any  popular  discussion  must  deal  with  the 
concrete,  rather  than  with  the  abstract,  let  me  ask  him 
to  follow  me  somewhat  further,  that  we  may  try  the 
remedy  I  have  proposed  by  the  accepted  canons  of  taxa- 
tion. In  doing  so,  many  incidental  bearings  may  be  seen 
that  otherwise  might  escape  notice. 


CHAPTEE   III. 

THE  PBOPOSITION  TEIED  BY  THE  CANONS    OF   TAXATION. 

The  best  tax  by  which  public  revenues  can  be  raised 
is  evidently  that  which  will  closest  conform  to  the  fol- 
lowing conditions: 

1.  That  it  bear  as  lightly  as  possible  upon  production 
— so  as  least  to  check  the  increase  of  the  general  fund 
from  which  taxes  must  be  paid  and  the  community  main- 
tained. 

2.  That  it  be  easily  and  cheaply  collected,  and  fall  as 
directly  as  may  be  upon  the  ultimate  payers — so  as  to 
take  from  the  people  as  little  as  possible  in  addition  to 
what  it  yields  the  government. 

3.  That  it  be  certain — so  as  to  give  the  least  opportu- 
nity for  tyranny  or  corruption  on  the  part  of  officials,  and 
the  least  temptation  to  law-breaking  and  evasion  on  the 
part  of  the  taxpayers. 

4.  That  it  bear  equally — so  as  to  give  no  citizen  an 
advantage  or  put  any  at  a  disadvantage,  as  compared 
with  others. 

Let  us  consider  what  form  of  taxation  best  accords 
with  these  conditions.  Whatever  it  be,  that  evidently 
will  be  the  best  mode  in  which  the  public  revenues  can 
be  raised. 

7. — The  Effect  of  Taxes  upon  Production. 

All  taxes  must  evidently  come  from  the  produce  of 
land  and  labor,  since  there  is  no  other  source  of  wealth 
than  the  union  of  human  exertion  with  the  material  and 


Chap.ni.  THE  CANONS  OF  TAXATION.  407 

forces  of  nature.  But  the  manner  in  which  equal 
amounts  of  taxation  may  be  imposed  may  very  differently 
affect  the  production  of  wealth.  Taxation  which  lessens 
the  reward  of  the  producer  necessarily  lessens  the  incen- 
tive to  production;  taxation  which  is  conditioned  upon 
the  act  of  production,  or  the  use  of  any  of  the  three 
factors  of  production,  necessarily  discourages  produc- 
tion. Thus  taxation  which  diminishes  the  earnings  of 
the  laborer  or  the  returns  of  the  capitalist  tends  to  ren- 
der the  one  less  industrious  and  intelligent,  the  other 
less  disposed  to  save  and  invest.  Taxation  which  falls 
upon  the  processes  of  production  interposes  an  artificial 
obstacle  to  the  creation  of  wealth.  Taxation  which  falls 
upon  labor  as  it  is  exerted,  wealth  as  it  is  used  as  capital, 
and  as  it  is  cultivated,  will  manifestly  tend  to  discourage 
production  much  more  powerfully  than  taxation  to  the 
same  amount  levied  upon  laborers,  whether  they  work  or 
play,  upon  wealth  whether  used  productively  or  unpro- 
ductively,  or  upon  land  whether  cultivated  or  left  waste. 

The  mode  of  taxation  is,  in  fact,  quite  as  important  as 
the  amount.  As  a  small  burden  badly  placed  may  dis- 
tress a  horse  that  could  carry  with  ease  a  much  larger 
one  properly  adjusted,  so  a  people  may  be  impoverished 
and  their  power  of  producing  wealth  destroyed  by  taxa- 
tion, which,  if  levied  in  another  way,  could  be  borne  with 
ease.  A  tax  on  date-trees,  imposed  by  Mohammed  Ali, 
caused  the  Egyptian  fellahs  to  cut  down  their  trees;  but 
a  tax  of  twice  the  amount  imposed  on  the  land  produced 
no  such  result.  The  tax  of  ten  per  cent,  on  all  sales, 
imposed  by  the  Duke  of  Alva  in  the  Netherlands,  v/ould, 
had  it  been  maintained,  have  all  but  stopped  exchange 
while  yielding  but  little  revenue. 

But  we  need  not  go  abroad  for  illustrations.  The 
production  of  wealth  in  the  United  States  is  largely 
lessened  by  taxation  which  bears  upon  its  processes. 
Ship-building,  in  which  we  excelled,   has  been  all  but 


408  APPLICATION  OF  THE  EEMEDT.  Book  Vni. 

destroyed,  so  far  as  the  foreign  trade  is  concerned,  and 
many  branches  of  production  and  exchange  seriously 
crippled,  by  taxes  which  divert  industry  from  more  to 
less  productive  forms. 

This  checking  of  production  is  in  greater  or  less  de- 
gree characteristic  of  most  of  the  taxes  by  which  the 
revenues  of  modern  governments  are  raised.  All  taxes 
upon  manufactures,  all  taxes  upon  commerce,  all  taxes 
upon  capital,  all  taxes  upon  improvements,  are  of  this 
kind.  Their  tendency  is  the  same  as  that  of  Mohammed 
All's  tax  on  date-trees,  though  their  effect  may  not  be  so 
clearly  seen. 

All  such  taxes  have  a  tendency  to  reduce  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  and  should,  therefore,  never  be  resorted 
to  when  it  is  possible  to  raise  money  by  taxes  which  do 
not  check  production.  This  becomes  possible  as  society 
develops  and  wealth  accumulates.  Taxes  which  fall 
upon  ostentation  would  simply  turn  into  the  public 
treasury  what  otherwise  would  be  wasted  in  vain  show 
for  the  sake  of  show;  and  taxes  upon  wills  and  devises  of 
the  rich  would  probably  have  little  effect  in  checking 
the  desire  for  accumulation,  which,  after  it  has  fairly  got 
hold  of  a  man,  becomes  a  blind  passion.  But  the  great 
class  of  taxes  from  which  revenue  may  be  derived  with- 
out interference  with  production  are  taxes  upon  monop- 
olies— for  the  profit  of  monopoly  is  in  itself  a  tax  levied 
upon  production,  and  to  tax  it  is  simply  to  divert  into 
the  public  coffers  what  production  must  in  any  event 

pay- 
There  are  among  us  various  sorts  of  monopolies.  For 
instance,  there  are  the  temporary  monopolies  created  by 
the  patent  and  copyright  laws.  These  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely unjust  and  unwise  to  tax,  inasmuch  as  they  are 
but  recognitions  of  the  right  of  labor  to  its  intangible 
productions,  and  constitute  a  reward  held  out  to  inven- 


Chap.  in.  THE  CANONS  OF  TAXATION.  409 

tion  and  authorship.*  There  are  also  the  onerous  monop- 
olies alluded  to  in  Chapter  IV  of  Book  III,  which  result 
from  the  aggregation  of  capital  in  businesses  which  are  of 
the  nature  of  monopolies.  But  while  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely diflBcult,  if  not  altogether  impossible,  to  levy 
taxes  by  general  law  so  that  they  would  fall  exclusively 
on  the  returns  of  such  monopoly  and  not  become  taxes 
on  production  or  exchange,  it  is  much  better  that  these 
monopolies  should  be  abolished.  In  large  part  they 
spring  from  legislative  commission  or  omission,  as,  for 
instance,  the  ultimate  reason  that  San  Francisco  mer- 
chants are  compelled  to  pay  more  for  goods  sent  direct 
from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  by  the  Isthmus  route 
than  it  costs  to  ship  them  from  New  York  to  Liverpool 
or  Southampton  and  thence  to  San  Francisco,  is  to  be 
found  in  the   "protective"  laws  which  make  it  so  costly 

*  Following  the  habit  of  confounding  the  exclusive  right  granted 
by  a  patent  and  that  granted  by  a  copyright  as  recognitions  of  the 
right  of  labor  to  its  intangible  productions,  I  in  this  fell  into  error 
which  I  subsequently  acknowledged  and  corrected  in  the  Standard 
of  June  23,  1888.  The  two  things  are  not  alike,  but  essentially 
different.  The  copyright  is  not  a  right  to  the  exclusive  use  of  a  fact, 
an  idea,  or  a  combination,  which  by  the  natural  law  of  property  all 
are  free  to  use;  but  only  to  the  labor  expended  in  the  thing  itself. 
It  does  not  prevent  any  one  from  using  for  himself  the  facts,  the 
knowledge,  the  laws  or  combinations  for  a  similar  production,  but 
only  from  using  the  identical  form  of  the  particular  book  or  other 
production — the  actual  labor  which  has  in  short  been  expended  in 
producing  it.  It  rests  therefore  upon  the  natural,  moral  right  of 
each  one  to  enjoy  the  products  of  his  own  exertion,  and  involves  no 
interference  with  the  similar  right  of  any  one  else  to  do  likewise. 

The  patent,  on  the  other  hand,  prohibits  any  one  from  doing  a 
similar  thing,  and  involves,  usually  for  a  specified  time,  an  interference 
with  the  equal  liberty  on  which  the  right  of  ownership  rests.  The 
copyright  is  therefore  in  accordance  with  the  moral  law — it  gives  to 
the  man  who  has  expended  the  intangible  labor  required  to  write  a 
particular  book  or  paint  a  picture  security  against  the  copying  of  that 
identical  thing.  The  patent  is  in  defiance  of  this  natural  right.  It 
prohibits  others  from  doing  what  has  been  already  attempted.    Every 


410  APPLICATION  OF  THE  BEMEDT.  Booh  vni. 

to  build  American  steamers  and  which  forbid  foreign 
steamers  to  carry  goods  between  American  ports.  The 
reason  that  residents  of  Nevada  are  compelled  to  pay  as 
much  freight  from  the  East  as  though  their  goods  were 
carried  to  San  Francisco  and  back  again,  is  that  the 
authority  which  prevents  extortion  on  the  part  of  a  hack 
driver  is  not  exercised  in  respect  to  a  railroad  company. 
And  it  may  be  said  generally  that  businesses  which  are  in 
their  nature  monopolies  are  properly  part  of  the  functions 
of  the  State,  and  should  be  assumed  by  the  State.  There 
is  the  same  reason  why  Government  should  carry  tele- 
graphic messages  as  that  it  should  carry  letters;  that  rail- 
roads should  belong  to  the  public  as  that  common  roads 
should. 

But  all  other  monopolies  are  trivial  in  extent  as  com- 
pared with  the  monopoly  of  land.  And  the  value  of  land 
expressing  a  monopoly,  pure  and  simple,  is  in  every  re- 
spect fitted  for  taxation.  That  is  to  say,  while  the  value 
of  a  railroad  or  telegraph  line,  the  price  of  gas  or  of  a 
patent  medicine,  may  express  the  price  of  monopoly,  it 
also  expresses  the  exertion  of  labor  and  capital;  but  the 
value  of  land,  or  economic  rent,  as  we  have  seen,  is  in  no 
part  made  up  from  these  factors,  and  expresses  nothing 
but  the  advantage  of  appropriation.  Taxes  levied  upon 
the  value  of  land  cannot  check  production  in  the  slight- 
est degree,  until  they  exceed  rent,  or  the  value  of  land 

one  has  a  moral  right  to  think  what  I  think,  or  to  perceive  what  I 
perceive,  or  to  do  what  I  do — no  matter  whether  he  gets  the  hint  from 
me  or  independently  of  me.  Discovery  can  give  no  right  of  owner- 
ship, for  whatever  is  discovered  must  have  been  already  here  to  be 
discovered.  If  a  man  make  a  wheelbarrow,  or  a  book,  or  a  picture, 
he  has  a  moral  right  to  that  particular  wheelbarrow,  or  book,  or  pic- 
ture, but  no  right  to  ask  that  others  be  prevented  from  making  sim- 
ilar things.  Such  a  prohibition,  though  given  for  the  purpose  of 
stimulating  discovery  and  invention,  really  in  the  long  run  operates 
as  a  check  upon  them. 


Chap.Ul.  THE  CANOifS  OF  TAXATION.  411 

taken  annually,  for  unlike  taxes  upon  commodities,  or 
exchange,  or  capital,  or  any  of  the  tools  or  processes  of 
production,  they  do  not  bear  upon  production.  The 
value  of  land  does  not  express  the  reward  of  production, 
as  does  the  value  of  crops,  of  cattle,  of  buildings,  or  any  of 
the  things  which  are  styled  personal  property  and  improve- 
ments. It  expresses  the  exchange  value  of  monopoly. 
It  is  not  in  any  case  the  creation  of  the  individual  who 
owns  the  land;  it  is  created  by  the  growth  of  the  com- 
munity. Hence  the  community  can  take  it  all  without 
in  any  way  lessening  the  incentive  to  improvement  or  in 
the  slightest  degree  lessening  the  production  of  wealth. 
Taxes  may  be  imposed  upon  the  value  of  land  until  all 
rent  is  taken  by  the  State,  without  reducing  the  wages 
of  labor  or  the  reward  of  capital  one  iota;  without  in- 
creasing the  price  of  a  single  commodity,  or  making  pro- 
duction in  any  way  more  difficult. 

But  more  than  this.  Taxes  on  the  value  of  land  nob 
only  do  not  check  production  as  do  most  other  taxes,  but 
they  tend  to  increase  production,  by  destroying  specula- 
tive rent.  How  speculative  rent  checks  production  may 
be  seen  not  only  in  the  valuable  land  withheld  from  use, 
but  in  the  paroxysms  of  industrial  depression  which, 
originating  in  the  speculative  advance  in  land  values, 
propagate  themselves  over  the  whole  civilized  world, 
everywhere  paralyzing  industry,  and  causing  more  waste 
and  probably  more  suffering  than  would  a  general  war. 
Taxation  which  would  take  rent  for  public  uses  would 
prevent  all  this;  while  if  land  were  taxed  to  anything 
near  its  rental  value,  no  one  could  afford  to  hold  land 
that  he  was  not  using,  and,  consequently,  land  not  in 
use  would  be  thrown  open  to  those  who  would  use  it. 
Settlement  would  be  closer,  and,  consequently,  labor  and 
capital  would  be  enabled  to  produce  much  more  with  the 
same  exertion.  The  dog  in  the  manger  who,  in  this 
country  especially,  so  wastes  productive  power,  would  be 
choked  off. 


HM  ArruoJoioM  of  m  kebedt.       amk  nn. 


yet  an  eren  noi<e  impoitaiii  "WSj  Vf  "^luch, 
tkwwigh  ilB  eliedt  upon  dutribfation,  the  taking  of  rent 
to  pabGe  am  bj  tamtion  wonld  stunolste  the  produo- 
tkn  of  woUQl.  Bat  lefefcnce  to  that  maj  be  leaenred. 
It  k  aafficienfly  eiident  that  with  r^ard  to  production, 
the  tax  npon  the  falne  of  land  is  the  best  tax  that  can  be 
mpoaed.  Tax  ■unmfiMtnreii,  and  the  effeet  is  to  check 
■sniifMliiiiiift;  tax  impwieinents,  and  the  eflEect  is  to 
IsBBon  impsoireaieBBt;  tax  oommeroe,  and  the  effect  is  to 
jiiefSMt  exdhangv;  tax  ca^tal,  and  the  effect  is  to  dmre 
it  mwaf.  Bat  the  vh<^  lahie  of  haid  maj  be  taken  in 
taxBtMii,aDd  the  onty  effect  wiD  be  to  stimnhrte  indnstrjr, 
to  opoB  nev  oppertnnities  to  capitsl,  and  to  increase  the 
jwadwftisii  of 'veslth. 

IL—A»  U  Emm  amd  Ckmpmtss  tf  OdhOum. 

With,  perh^Sy  the  exception  of  certain  licenses  and 
atanq»  dnties,  vhuh  may  be  made  almost  to  collect  them- 
sehresi,  but  which  can  be  leUed  on  for  obSj  a  tririsl 
aBMHmt  of  lerarae,  a  tax  npon  land  raloes  can,  of  all 
taxes,  be  most  eanlf  and  eheaj^  eoHeeted.  For  land 
cannot  be  hidden  or  csnied  off;  its  iralne  can  be  readfly 
ascertained,  and  the  ami  man  iil  once  made,  nothing  but 
a  raesiver  is  rsqnired  for  ooDeetion. 

And  as  nader  all  fiscal  sjrstens  some  part  of  the  public 
eoDeeted  from  taxes  on  land,  and  the 
for  that  purpose  abead j  exists  and  could  as 
wen  be  auide  to  ooDect  all  as  apart^  theoost  of  ooOeciing 
the  rerenne  bow  obtsined  bj  other  taxes  might  be  en- 
tirety sared  bj  sabstituting  tiie  tax  on  land  values  for  all 
other  taxeSb  What  an  cnooMras  saving  might  thus  be 
made  cm  be  inleRed  firom  the  horde  of  irfficials  now  en- 
geged  in  ocdleetii^  these  taxes. 

This  saving  would  largety  reduce  the  difference  be- 
tween what  taxation  now  costs  the  people  ud  what  it 
ji^di^  bnt  the  aabstitation  «f  a  tax  on  land  values  for 


Chap.m.  THE  CANONS  OP  TAXATION.  413 

all  other  taxes  would  operate  to  reduce  this  difference  in 
an  even  more  important  way. 

A  tax  on  land  values  does  not  add  to  prices,  and  is  thus 
paid  directly  by  the  persons  on  whom  it  falls;  whereas, 
all  taxes  upon  things  of  unfixed  quantity  increase  prices, 
and  in  the  course  of  exchange  are  shifted  from  seller  to 
buyer,  increasing  as  they  go.  If  we  impose  a  tax  upon 
money  loaned,  as  has  been  often  attempted,  the  lender 
will  charge  the  tax  to  the  borrower,  and  the  borrower 
must  pay  it  or  not  obtain  the  loan.  If  the  borrower  uses 
it  in  his  business,  he  in  his  turn  must  get  back  the  tax 
from  his  customers,  or  his  business  becomes  unprofitable. 
If  we  impose  a  tax  upon  buildings,  the  users  of  buildings 
must  finally  pay  it,  for  the  erection  of  buildings  will 
cease  until  building  rents  become  high  enough  to  pay 
the  regular  profit  and  the  tax  besides.  If  we  impose  a 
tax  upon  manufactures  or  imported  goods,  the  manufac- 
turer or  importer  will  charge  it  in  a  higher  price  to  the  job- 
ber, the  jobber  to  the  retailer,  and  the  retailer  to  the 
consumer.  Now,  the  consumer,  on  whom  the  tax  thus 
ultimately  falls,  must  not  only  pay  the  amount  of  the  tax, 
but  also  a  profit  on  this  amount  to  every  one  who  has  thus 
advanced  it — for  profit  on  the  capital  he  has  advanced  in 
paying  taxes  is  as  much  required  by  each  dealer  as  profit 
on  the  capital  he  has  advanced  in  paying  for  goods. 
Manila  cigars  cost,  when  bought  of  the  importer  in  San 
Francisco,  $70  a  thousand,  of  which  $14  is  the  cost  of 
the  cigars  laid  down  in  this  port  and  $56  is  the  customs 
duty.  But  the  dealer  who  purchases  these  cigars  to 
sell  again  must  charge  a  profit,  not  on  $14,  the  real  cost 
of  the  cigars,  but  on  $70,  the  cost  of  the  cigars  plus  the 
duty.  In  this  way  all  taxes  which  add  to  prices  are 
shifted  from  hand  to  hand,  increasing  as  they  go,  until 
they  ultimately  rest  upon  consumers,  who  thus  pay  much 
more  than  is  received  by  the  government.  Now,  the 
way  taxes  raise  prices  is  by  increasing  the  cost  of  pro- 


414  APPLICATION  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  VIII 

duction,  and  checking  supply.  But  laud  is  not  a  thing 
of  human  production,  and  taxes  upon  rent  cannot  check 
supply.  Therefore,  though  a  tax  on  rent  compels  the 
land  owners  to  pay  more,  it  gives  them  no  power  to 
obtain  more  for  the  use  of  their  land,  as  it  in  no  way 
tends  to  reduce  the  supply  of  land.  On  the  contrary, 
by  compelling  those  who  hold  land  on  speculation  to  sell 
or  let  for  what  they  can  get,  a  tax  on  land  values  tends 
to  increase  the  competition  between  owners,  and  thus  to 
reduce  the  price  of  land. 

Thus  in  all  respects  a  tax  upon  land  values  is  the 
cheapest  tax  by  which  a  large  revenue  can  be  raised — 
giving  to  the  government  the  largest  net  revenue  in  pro- 
portion to  the  amount  taken  from  the  people. 

III. — As  to  Certainty. 

Certainty  is  an  important  element  in  taxation,  for  just 
as  the  collection  of  a  tax  depends  upon  the  diligence  and 
faithfulness  of  the  collectors  and  the  public  spirit  and 
honesty  of  those  who  are  to  pay  it,  will  opportunities 
for  tyranny  and  corruption  be  opened  on  the  one  side, 
and  for  evasions  and  frauds  on  the  other. 

The  methods  by  which  the  bulk  of  our  revenues  are 
collected  are  condemned  on  this  ground,  if  on  no  other. 
The  gross  corruptions  and  fraud  occasioned  in  the 
United  States  by  the  whisky  and  tobacco  taxes  are  well 
known;  the  constant  undervaluations  of  the  Custom 
House,  the  ridiculous  untruthfulness  of  income  tax  re- 
turns, and  the  absolute  impossibility  of  getting  anything 
like  a  just  valuation  of  personal  property,  are  matters  of 
notoriety.  The  material  loss  which  such  taxes  inflict — 
the  item  of  cost  which  this  uncertainty  adds  to  the 
amount  paid  by  the  people  but  not  received  by  the  gov- 
ernment— is  very  great.  When,  in  the  days  of  the  pro- 
tective system  of  England,  her  coasts  were  lined  with  an 
army  of  men  endeavoring  to  prevent  smuggling,  and  an- 


Chap.IU.  THE  CANONS  OF  TAXATION.  415 

other  army  of  men  were  engaged  in  evading  them,  it  is 
evident  that  the  maintenance  of  both  armies  had  to 
come  from  the  produce  of  labor  and  capital;  that  the 
expenses  and  profits  of  the  smugglers,  as  well  as  the  pay 
and  bribes  of  the  Custom  House  officers,  constituted  a 
tax  upon  the  industry  of  the  nation,  in  addition  to  what 
was  received  by  the  government.  And  so,  all  douceurs 
to  assessors;  all  bribes  to  customs  officials;  all  moneys 
expended  in  electing  pliable  officers  or  in  procuring  acts 
or  decisions  which  avoid  taxation;  all  the  costly  modes 
of  bringing  in  goods  so  as  to  evade  duties,  and  of  manu- 
facturing so  as  to  evade  imposts;  all  moieties,  and  ex- 
penses of  detectives  and  spies;  all  expenses  of  legal  pro- 
ceedings and  punishments,  not  only  to  the  government, 
but  to  those  prosecuted,  are  so  much  which  these  taxes 
take  from  the  general  fund  of  wealth,  without  adding  to 
the  revenue. 

Yet  this  is  the  least  part  of  the  cost.  Taxes  which 
lack  the  element  of  certainty  tell  most  fearfully  upon 
morals.  Our  revenue  laws  as  a  body  might  well  be  en- 
titled, "Acts  to  promote  the  corruption  of  public  officials, 
to  suppress  honesty  and  encourage  fraud,  to  set  a  pre- 
mium upon  perjury  and  the  subornation  of  perjury,  and 
to  divorce  the  idea  of  law  from  the  idea  of  justice." 
This  is  their  true  character,  and  they  succeed  admirably. 
A  Custom  House  oath  is  a  by-word;  our  assessors  regu- 
larly swear  to  assess  all  property  at  its  full,  true,  cash 
value,  and  habitually  do  nothing  of  the  kind;  men  who 
pride  themselves  on  their  personal  and  commercial  honor 
bribe  officials  and  make  false  returns;  and  the  demoraliz- 
ing spectacle  is  constantly  presented  of  the  same  court 
trying  a  murderer  one  day  and  a  vender  of  unstamped 
matches  the  next! 

So  uncertain  and  so  demoralizing  are  these  modes  of 
taxation  that  the  New  York  Commission,  composed  of 
David  A.  Wells,  Edwin  Dodge  and  George  W.  Cuyler, 


416  APPLICATION  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  Vin. 

who  investigated  the  subject  of  taxation  in  that  Statet 
proposed  to  substitute  for  most  of  the  taxes  now  levied, 
other  than  that  on  real  estate,  an  arbitrary  tax  on  each 
individual,  estimated  on  the  rental  value  of  the  premises 
he  occupied. 

But  there  is  no  necessity  of  resorting  to  any  arbitrary 
assessment.  The  tax  on  land  values,  which  is  the  least 
arbitrary  of  taxes,  possesses  in  the  highest  degree  the 
element  of  certainty.  It  may  be  assessed  and  collected 
with  a  definiteness  that  partakes  of  the  immovable  and 
unconcealable  character  of  the  land  itself.  Taxes  levied 
on  land  may  be  collected  to  the  last  cent,  and  though 
the  assessment  of  land  is  now  often  unequal,  yet  the 
assessment  of  personal  property  is  far  more  unequal,  and 
these  inequalities  in  the  assessment  of  land  largely  arise 
from  the  taxation  of  improvements  with  land,  and  from 
the  demoralization  that,  springing  from  the  causes  to 
which  I  have  referred,  afEects  the  whole  scheme  of  taxa- 
tion. Were  all  taxes  placed  upon  land  values,  irrespec- 
tive of  improvements,  the  scheme  of  taxation  would  be 
so  simple  and  clear,  and  public  attention  would  be  so 
directed  to  it,  that  the  valuation  of  taxation  could  and 
would  be  made  with  the  same  certainty  that  a  real  estate 
agent  can  determine  the  price  a  seller  can  geb  for  a  lot. 

IV. — As  to  Equality. 

Adam  Smith's  canon  is,  that  "The  subjects  of  every 
state  ought  to  contribute  toward  the  support  of  the 
government  as  nearly  as  possible  in  proportion  to  their 
respective  abilities;  that  is,  in  proportion  to  the  revenue 
which  they  respectively  enjoy  under  the  protection  of 
the  state."  Every  tax,  he  goes  on  to  say,  which  falls 
only  upon  rent,  or  only  upon  wages,  or  only  upon  in- 
terest, is  necessarily  unequal.  In  accordance  with  this 
is  the  common  idea  which  our  systems  of  taxing  every- 
thing vainly  attempt  to  carry  out — that  every  one  should 


Chap.m.  THE  CANONS  OF  TAXATION.  417 

pay  taxes  in  proportion  to  his  means,  or  in  proportion  to 
his  income. 

But,  waiving  all  the  insuperable  practical  diflBculties  in 
the  way  of  taxing  every  one  according  to  his  means,  it  is 
evident  that  justice  cannot  be  thus  attained. 

Here,  for  instance,  are  two  men  of  equal  means,  or 
equal  incomes,  one  having  a  large  family,  the  other  hav- 
ing no  one  to  support  but  himself.  Upon  these  two  men 
indirect  taxes  fall  very  unequally,  as  the  one  cannot 
avoid  the  taxes  on  the  food,  clothing,  etc.,  consumed  by 
his  family,  while  the  other  need  pay  only  upon  the  neces- 
saries consumed  by  himself.  But,  supposing  taxes  levied 
directly,  so  that  each  pays  the  same  amount.  Still  there 
is  injustice.  The  income  of  the  one  is  charged  with  the 
support  of  six,  eight,  or  ten  persons;  the  income  of  the 
other  with  that  of  but  a  single  person.  And  unless  the 
Malthusian  doctrine  be  carried  to  the  extent  of  regard- 
ing the  rearing  of  a  new  citizen  as  an  injury  to  the  state, 
here  is  a  gross  injustice. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  this  is  a  diflSculty  which  cannot 
be  got  over;  that  it  is  Nature  herself  that  brings  human 
beings  helpless  into  the  world  and  devolves  their  support 
upon  the  parents,  providing  in  compensation  therefor 
her  own  sweet  and  great  rewards.  Very  well,  then,  let 
us  turn  to  Nature,  and  read  the  mandates  of  justice  in 
her  law. 

Nature  gives  to  labor;  and  to  labor  alone.  In  a  very 
Garden  of  Eden  a  man  would  starve  but  for  human  exer- 
tion. Now,  here  are  two  men  of  equal  incomes — that  of 
the  one  derived  from  the  exertion  of  his  labor,  that 
of  the  other  from  the  rent  of  land.  Is  it  just  that  they 
should  equally  contribute  to  the  expenses  of  the  state? 
Evidently  not.  The  income  of  the  one  represents  wealth 
he  creates  and  adds  to  the  general  wealth  of  the  state; 
the  income  of  the  other  represents  merely  wealth  that 
he  takes  from  the  general  stock,  returning  nothing. 


418  APPLICATION  OF  THE  EEMEDYo  Book  vm 

The  right  of  the  one  to  the  enjoyment  of  his  income 
rests  on  the  warrant  of  nature,  which  returns  wealth 
to  labor;  the  right  of  the  other  to  the  enjoyment 
of  his  income  is  a  mere  fictitious  right,  the  creation  of 
municipal  regulation,  which  is  unknown  and  unrecog- 
nized by  nature.  The  father  who  is  told  that  from  his 
labor  he  must  support  his  children  must  acquiesce,  for 
such  is  the  natural  decree;  but  he  may  justly  demand 
that  from  the  income  gained  by  his  labor  not  one  penny 
shall  be  taken,  so  long  as  a  penny  remains  of  incomes 
which  are  gained  by  a  monopoly  of  the  natural  oppor- 
tunities which  Nature  offers  impartially  to  all,  and  in 
which  his  children  have  as  their  birthright  an  equal 
share. 

Adam  Smith  speaks  of  incomes  as  **enjoyed  under  the 
protection  of  the  state;"  and  this  is  the  ground  upon 
which  the  equal  taxation  of  all  species  of  property  is 
commonly  insisted  upon — that  it  is  equally  protected  by 
the  state.  The  basis  of  this  idea  is  evidently  that  the 
enjoyment  of  property  is  made  possible  by  the  state- 
that  there  is  a  value  created  and  maintained  by  the  com- 
munity, which  is  justly  called  upon  to  meet  community 
expenses.  Now,  of  what  values  is  this  true?  Only  of 
the  value  of  land.  This  is  a  value  that  does  not  arise 
until  a  community  is  formed,  and  that,  unlike  other 
values,  grows  with  the  growth  of  the  community.  It 
exists  only  as  the  community  exists.  Scatter  again  the 
largest  community,  and  land,  now  so  valuable,  would 
have  no  value  at  all.  With  every  increase  of  population 
the  value  of  land  rises;  with  every  decrease  it  falls. 
This  is  true  of  nothing  else  save  of  things  which,  like 
the  ownership  of  land,  are  in  their  nature  monopolies. 

The  tax  upon  land  values  is,  therefore,  the  most  just 
and  equal  of  all  taxes.  It  falls  only  upon  those  who  re- 
ceive from  society  a  peculiar  and  valuable  benefit,  and 
upon  them  in  proportion  to  the  benefit  they  receive.    It 


Chap.UL  THE  CANONS  OF  TAXATION.  419 

is  the  taking  by  the  community,  for  the  use  of  the  com- 
munity, of  that  value  which  is  the  creation  of  the  com- 
munity. It  is  the  application  of  the  common  property 
to  common  uses.  When  all  rent  is  taken  by  taxation  for 
the  needs  of  the  community,  then  will  the  equality  or- 
dained by  nature  be  attained.  No  citizen  will  have  an 
advantage  over  any  other  citizen  save  as  is  given  by  his 
industry,  skill,  and  intelligence;  and  each  will  obtain 
what  he  fairly  earns.  Then,  but  not  till  then,  will  labor 
get  its  full  reward,  and  capital  its  natural  return. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS. 

The  grounds  from  which  we  have  drawn  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  tax  on  land  values  or  rent  is  the  hest 
method  of  raising  public  revenues  have  been  admitted 
expressly  or  tacitly  by  all  economists  of  standing,  since 
the  determination  of  the  nature  and  law  of  rent. 

Ricardo  says  (Chap.  X),  "a  tax  on  rent  would  fall 
wholly  on  landlords,  and  could  not  be  shifted  to  any 
class  of  consamers,"  for  it  *'would  leave  unaltered  the 
difference  between  the  produce  obtained  from  the  least 
productive  land  in  cultivation  and  that  obtained  from  land 
of  every  other  quality.  *  *  *  A  tax  on  rent  would  not 
discourage  the  cultivation  of  fresh  land,  for  sach  land 
pays  no  rent  and  would  be  untaxed.*' 

McCulloch  (Note  XXIV  to  "Wealth  of  Nations")  de- 
clares that  "in  a  practical  point  of  view  taxes  on  the  rent 
of  land  are  among  the  most  unjust  and  impolitic  that 
can  be  imagined,'*  but  he  makes  this  assertion  solely  on 
the  ground  of  his  assumption  that  it  is  practically  im- 
possible to  distinguish  in  taxation  between  the  sum  paid 
for  the  use  of  the  soil  and  that  paid  on  account  of  the 
capital  expended  upon  it.  But,  supposing  that  this 
separation  could  be  effected,  he  admits  that  the  sum 
paid  to  landlords  for  the  use  of  the  natural  powers  of 
the  soil  might  be  entirely  swept  away  by  a  tax  without 
their  having  it  in  their  power  to  throw  any  portion  of 
the  burden  upon  any  one  else,  and  without  affecting  the 
price  of  produce. 

John  Stuart  Mill  not  only  admits  all  this,  but  expressly 


C7iap.1V.  INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS.  421 

declares  the  expediency  and  justice  of  a  peculiar  tax  on 
rent,  asking  what  right  the  landlords  have  to  the  acces- 
sion of  riches  that  comes  to  them  from  the  general 
progress  of  society  without  work,  risk,  or  economizing 
on  their  part,  and  although  he  expressly  disapproves  of 
interfering  with  their  claim  to  the  present  value  of  land, 
he  proposes  to  take  the  whole  future  increase  as  belong- 
ing to  society  by  natural  right. 

Mrs.  Fawcett,  in  the  little  compendium  of  the  writings 
of  her  husband,  entitled  "Political  Economy  for  Begin- 
ners," says:  *'The  land  tax,  whether  small  or  great  in 
amount,  partakes  of  the  nature  of  a  rent  paid  by  the 
owner  of  land  to  the  state.  In  a  great  part  of  India  the 
land  is  owned  by  the  government  and  therefore  the  land 
tax  is  rent  paid  direct  to  the  state.  The  economic 
perfection  of  this  system  of  tenure  may  be  readily 
perceived." 

In  fact,  that  rent  should,  both  on  grounds  of  expedi- 
ency and  justice,  be  the  peculiar  subject  of  taxation,  is 
involved  in  the  accepted  doctrine  of  rent,  and  may  be 
found  in  embryo  in  the  works  of  all  economists  who  have 
accepted  the  law  of  Eicardo.  That  these  principles  have 
not  been  pushed  to  their  necessary  conclusions,  as  I  have 
pushed  them,  evidently  arises  from  the  indisposition  to 
endanger  or  offend  the  enormous  interest  involved  in 
private  ownership  in  land,  and  from  the  false  theories  in 
regard  to  wages  and  the  cause  of  poverty  which  have 
dominated  economic  thought. 

But  there  has  been  a  school  of  economists  who  plainly 
perceived,  what  is  clear  to  the  natural  perceptions  of 
men  when  uninfluenced  by  habit — that  the  revenues  of 
the  common  property,  land,  ought  to  be  appropriated  to 
the  common  service.  The  French  Economists  of  the 
last  century,  headed  by  Quesnay  and  Turgot,  proposed 
just  what  I  have  proposed,  that  all  taxation  should  be 
abolished  save  a  tax  upon  the  value  of  land.    As  I  am 


433  APPLICATION  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Booh  Vm. 

acquainted  with  the  doctrines  of  Quesnay  and  his  dis- 
ciples only  at  second  hand  through  the  medium  of  the 
English  writers,  I  am  unable  to  say  how  far  his  peculiar 
ideas  as  to  agriculture  being  the  only  productive  avoca- 
tion, etc.,  are  erroneous  apprehensions,  or  mere  peculiari- 
ties of  terminology.  But  of  this  I  am  certain  from  the 
proposition  in  which  his  theory  culminated — that  he  saw 
the  fundamental  relation  between  land  and  labor  which 
has  since  been  lost  sight  of,  and  that  he  arrived  at  prac- 
tical truth,  though,  it  may  be,  through  a  course  of  de- 
fectively expressed  reasoning.  The  causes  which  leave 
in  the  hands  of  the  landlord  a  "produce  net"  were  by 
the  Physiocrats  no  better  explained  than  the  suction  of 
a  pump  was  explained  by  the  assumption  that  nature 
abhors  a  vacuum,  but  the  fact  in  its  practical  relations 
to  social  economy  was  recognized,  and  the  benefit  which 
would  result  from  the  perfect  freedom  given  to  industry 
and  trade  by  a  substitution  of  a  tax  on  rent  for  all  the 
impositions  which  hamper  and  distort  the  application  of 
labor  was  doubtless  as  clearly  seen  by  them  as  it  is  by 
me.  One  of  the  things  most  to  be  regretted  about  the 
French  Revolution  is  that  it  overwhelmed  the  ideas  of 
the  Economists,  just  as  they  were  gaining  strength 
among  the  thinking  classes,  and  were  apparently  about  to 
influence  fiscal  legislation. 

Without  knowing  anything  of  Quesnay  or  his  doc- 
trines, I  have  reached  the  same  practical  conclusion  by  a 
route  which  cannot  be  disputed,  and  have  based  it  on 
grounds  which  cannot  be  questioned  by  the  accepted 
political  economy. 

The  only  objection  to  the  tax  on  rent  or  land  values 
which  is  to  be  met  with  in  standard  politico-economic 
works  is  one  which  concedes  its  advantages — for  it  is, 
that  from  the  diflBculty  of  separation,  we  might,  in  tax- 
ing the  rent  of  land,  tax  something  else.  McCulloch, 
for  instance,  declares  taxes  on  the  rent  of  land  to  be 


Ckap.IV.  INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS.  423 

impolitic  and  unjust  because  the  return  received  for  the 
natural  and  inherent  powers  of  the  soil  cannot  be  clearly 
distinguished  from  the  return  received  from  improve- 
ments and  meliorations,  which  might  thus  be  discouraged. 
Macaulay  somewhere  says  that  if  the  admission  of  the 
attraction  of  gravitation  were  inimical  to  any  considera- 
ble pecuniary  interest,  there  would  not  be  wanting  argu- 
ments against  gravitation — a  truth  of  which  this  objec- 
tion is  an  illustration.  For  admitting  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble invariably  to  separate  the  value  of  land  from  the 
value  of  improvements,  is  this  necessity  of  continuing  to 
tax  some  improvements  any  reason  why  we  should  con- 
tinue to  tax  all  improvements?  If  it  discourage  produc- 
tion to  tax  values  which  labor  and  capital  have  intimately 
combined  with  that  of  land,  how  much  greater  dis- 
couragement is  involved  in  taxing  not  only  these,  but  all 
the  clearly  distinguishable  values  which  labor  and  capital 
create? 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  value  of  land  can  always 
be  readily  distinguished  from  the  value  of  improvements. 
In  countries  like  the  United  States  there  is  much  valua- 
ble land  that  has  never  been  improved;  and  in  many  of 
the  States  the  value  of  the  land  and  the  value  of  improve- 
ments are  habitually  estimated  separately  by  the  assessors, 
though  afterward  reunited  under  the  term  real  estate.  Nor 
where  ground  has  been  occupied  from  immemorial  times, 
is  there  any  diflBculty  in  getting  at  the  value  of  the  bare 
land,  for  frequently  the  land  is  owned  by  one  person  and 
the  buildings  by  another,  and  when  a  fire  occurs  and 
improvements  are  destroyed,  a  clear  and  definite  value 
remains  in  the  land.  In  the  oldest  country  in  the  world 
no  difficulty  whatever  can  attend  the  separation,  if  all 
that  be  attempted  is  to  separate  the  value  of  the  clearly 
distinguishable  improvements,  made  within  a  moderate 
period,  from  the  value  of  the  land,  should  they  be  de- 
stroyed.   This,  manifestly,  is  all  that  justice  or  policy 


424  APPLICATION  OF  THE  BEMEDY.  Book  VIII. 

requires.  Absolute  accuracy  is  impossible  in  any  system, 
and  to  attempt  to  separate  all  that  the  human  race  has 
done  from  what  nature  originally  provided  would  be  as 
absurd  as  impracticable.  A  swamp  drained  or  a  hill 
terraced  by  the  Romans  constitutes  now  as  much  a  part 
of  the  natural  advantages  of  the  British  Isles  as  though 
the  work  had  been  done  by  earthquake  or  glacier.  The 
fact  that  after  a  certain  lapse  of  time  the  value  of  such 
permanent  improvements  would  be  considered  as  having 
lapsed  into  that  of  the  land,  and  would  be  taxed  accord- 
ingly, could  have  no  deterrent  effect  on  such  improve- 
ments, for  such  works  are  frequently  undertaken  upon 
leases  for  years.  The  fact  is,  that  each  generation  builds 
and  improves  for  itself,  and  not  for  the  remote  future. 
And  the  further  fact  is,  that  each  generation  is  heir,  not 
only  to  the  natural  powers  of  the  earth,  but  to  all  that 
remains  of  the  work  of  past  generations. 

An  objection  of  a  different  kind  may  however  be  made. 
It  may  be  said  that  where  political  power  is  diffused,  it 
is  highly  desirable  that  taxation  should  fall  not  on  one 
class,  such  as  land  owners,  but  on  all;  in  order  that  all 
who  exercise  political  power  may  feel  a  proper  interest 
in  economical  government.  Taxation  and  representa- 
tion, it  will  be  said,  cannot  safely  be  divorced. 

But  however  desirable  it  may  be  to  combine  with  polit- 
ical power  the  consciousness  of  public  burdens,  the  pres- 
ent system  certainly  does  not  secure  it.  Indirect  taxes 
are  largely  raised  from  those  who  pay  little  or  nothing 
consciously.  In  the  United  States  the  class  is  rapidly 
growing  who  not  only  feel  no  interest  in  taxation, 
but  who  have  no  concern  in  good  government.  In  our 
large  cities  elections  are  in  great  measure  determined 
not  by  considerations  of  public  interest,  but  by  such  in- 
fluences as  determined  elections  in  Rome  when  the  masses 
had  ceased  to  care  for  anything  but  bread  and  the  circus. 

The  effect  of  substituting  for  the  manifold  taxes  now 


Chap.  IV.  INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS.  425 

imposed  a  single  tax  on  the  value  of  land  would  hardly 
lessen  the  number  of  conscious  taxpayers,  for  the  divi- 
sion of  land  now  held  on  speculation  would  much  increase 
the  number  of  land  holders.  But  it  would  so  equalize 
the  distribution  of  wealth  as  to  raise  even  the  poorest 
above  that  condition  of  abject  poverty  in  which  public 
considerations  have  no  weight;  while  it  would  at  the 
same  time  cut  down  those  overgrown  fortunes  which 
raise  their  possessors  above  concern  in  government.  The 
dangerous  classes  politically  are  the  very  rich  and  very 
poor.  It  is  not  the  taxes  that  he  is  conscious  of  paying 
that  gives  a  man  a  stake  in  the  country,  an  interest  in  its 
government;  it  is  the  consciousness  of  feeling  that  he  is 
an  integral  part  of  the  community;  that  its  prosperity  is 
his  prosperity,  and  its  disgrace  his  shame.  Let  but  the 
citizen  feel  this;  let  him  be  surrounded  by  all  the  in- 
fluences that  spring  from  and  cluster  round  a  comforta- 
ble home,  and  the  community  may  rely  upon  him,  even 
to  limb  or  to  life.  Men  do  not  vote  patriotically,  any  more 
than  they  fight  patriotically,  because  of  their  payment  of 
taxes.  Whatever  conduces  to  the  comfortable  and  inde- 
pendent material  condition  of  the  masses  will  best  foster 
public  spirit,  will  make  the  ultimate  governing  power 
more  intelligent  and  more  virtuous. 

But  it  may  be  asked:  If  the  tax  on  land  values  is  so 
advantageous  a  mode  of  raising  revenue,  how  is  it  that 
so  many  other  taxes  are  resorted  to  in  preference  by  all 
governments? 

The  answer  is  obvious:  The  tax  on  land  values  is  the 
only  tax  of  any  itaportance  that  does  not  distribute  itself. 
It  falls  upon  the  owners  of  land,  and  there  is  no  way  in 
which  they  can  shift  the  burden  upon  any  one  else. 
Hence,  a  large  and  powerful  class  are  directly  interested 
in  keeping  down  the  tax  on  land  values  and  substituting, 
as  a  means  for  raising  the  required  revenue,  taxes  on 
other  things,  just  as  the  land  owners  of  England,  two 


426  APPLICATION  OF  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  VUl 

hundred  years  ago,  succeeded  in  establishing  an  excise, 
which  fell  on  all  consumers,  for  the  dues  under  the 
feudal  tenures,  which  fell  only  on  them. 

There  is,  thus,  a  definite  and  powerful  interest  opposed 
to  the  taxation  of  land  values;  but  to  the  other  taxes 
upon  which  modern  governments  so  largely  rely  there  is 
no  special  opposition.  The  ingenuity  of  statesmen  has 
been  exercised  in  devising  schemes  of  taxation  which 
drain  the  wages  of  labor  and  the  earnings  of  capital  as 
the  vampire  bat  is  said  to  suck  the  lifeblood  of  its  victim. 
Nearly  all  of  these  taxes  are  ultimately  paid  by  that  in- 
definable being,  the  consumer;  and  he  pays  them  in  a 
way  which  does  not  call  his  attention  to  the  fact  that  he 
is  paying  a  tax — pays  them  in  such  small  amounts  and  in 
such  insidious  modes  that  he  does  not  notice  it,  and  is 
not  likely  to  take  the  trouble  to  remonstrate  effectually. 
Those  who  pay  the  money  directly  to  the  tax  collector 
are  not  only  not  interested  in  opposing  a  tax  which  they 
so  easily  shift  from  their  own  shoulders,  but  are  very 
frequently  interested  in  its  imposition  and  maintenance, 
as  are  other  powerful  interests  which  profit,  or  expect  to 
profit,  by  the  increase  of  prices  which  such  taxes  bring 
about. 

Nearly  all  of  the  manifold  taxes  by  which  the  people 
of  the  United  States  are  now  burdened  have  been  im- 
posed rather  with  a  view  to  private  advantage  than  to 
the  raising  of  revenue,  and  the  great  obstacle  to  the 
simplification  of  taxation  is  these  private  interests,  whose 
representatives  cluster  in  the  lobby  whenever  a  reduction 
of  taxation  is  proposed,  to  see  that  the  taxes  by  which 
they  profit  are  not  reduced.  The  fastening  of  a  protec- 
tive tariff  upon  the  United  States  has  been  due  to  these 
influences,  and  not  to  the  acceptance  of  absurd  theories 
of  protection  upon  their  own  merits.  The  large  revenue 
which  the  civil  war  rendered  necessary  was  the  golden 
opportunity  of  these  special  interests,  and  taxes  were 


aMp.ir.  INDORSEMENTS  AND  OBJECTIONS.  427 

piled  up  on  every  possible  thing,  not  so  mnch  to  raise 
revenue  as  to  enable  particular  classes  to  participate 
in  the  advantages  of  tax-gathering  and  tax-pocketing. 
And,  since  the  war,  these  interested  parties  have  consti- 
tuted the  great  obstacle  to  the  reduction  of  taxation; 
those  taxes  which  cost  the  people  least  having,  for  this 
reason,  been  found  easier  to  abolish  than  those  taxes 
which  cost  the  people  most.  And,  thus,  even  popular 
governments,  which  have  for  their  avowed  principle  the 
securing  of  the  greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number^ 
are,  in  a  most  important  function,  used  to  secure  a  ques- 
tionable good  to  a  small  number,  at  the  expense  of  a 
great  evil  to  the  many. 

License  taxes  are  generally  favored  by  those  on  whom 
they  are  imposed,  as  they  tend  to  keep  others  from  en- 
tering the  business;  imposts  upon  manufactures  are 
frequently  grateful  to  large  manufacturers  for  similar 
reasons,  as  was  seen  in  the  opposition  of  the  distillers  to 
the  reduction  of  the  whisky  tax;  duties  on  imports  not 
only  tend  to  give  certain  producers  special  advantages, 
but  accrue  to  the  benefit  of  importers  or  dealers  who 
have  large  stocks  on  hand;  and  so,  in  the  case  of  all  such 
taxes,  there  are  particular  interests,  capable  of  ready 
organization  and  concerted  action,  which  favor  the  im- 
position of  the  tax,  while,  in  the  case  of  a  tax  upon  the 
value  of  land,  there  is  a  solid  and  sensitive  interest  stead- 
ily and  bitterly  to  oppose  it. 

But  if  once  the  truth  which  I  am  trying  to  make  clear 
is  understood  by  the  masses,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  a  union 
of  political  forces  strong  enough  to  carry  it  into  practice 
becomes  possible.  _-^  - 


BOOK  IX. 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY. 


CHAPTER      I. — OF  THE  EFFECT  UPON  THE  PRODUCTION  OF 

WEALTH. 
CHAPTER     II. — OF  THE   EFFECT    UPON  DISTRIBUTION  AND 

THENCE   UPON   PRODUCTION. 
CHAPTER  III. — OF  THE  EFFECT    UPON    INDIVIDUALS    AND 

CLASSES. 
CHAPTER    IV. — OF     THE       CHANGES      THAT      WOULD       BE 

WROUGHT   IN    SOCIAL    ORGANIZATION 

AND  SOCIAL  LIFE. 


I  cannot  play  upon  any  stringed  instrument;  but  I  can  tell  you 
how  of  a  little  village  to  make  a  great  and  glorious  city. — Themis- 
tocle8> 


Instead  of  the  thorn  shall  come  up  the  fir  tree,  and  instead  of  the 
trier  shall  come  up  the  myrtle  tree. 

And  they  shall  build  houses  and  inhabit  them;  and  they  shall  plant 
vineyards  and  eat  the  fruit  of  them.  They  shall  not  build  and  an- 
other inhabit;  they  shall  not  plant  and  another  eat. — Isaiah. 


CHAPTER   I. 

OP  THE  EFFECT  UPON  THE  PRODUCTION"  OF  WEALTH. 

The  elder  Mirabeau,  we  are  told,  ranked  the  proposi- 
tion of  Quesnay,  to  substitute  one  single  tax  on  rent  (the 
impot  unique)  for  all  other  taxes,  as  a  discovery  equal 
in  utility  to  the  invention  of  writing  or  the  substitution 
of  the  use  of  money  for  barter. 

To  whomsoever  will  think  over  the  matter,  this  saying 
will  appear  an  evidence  of  penetration  rather  than  of  ex- 
travagance. The  advantages  which  would  be  gained  by 
substituting  for  the  numerous  taxes  by  which  the  public 
revenues  are  now  raised,  a  single  tax  levied  upon  the 
value  of  land,  will  appear  more  and  more  important  the 
more  they  are  considered.  This  is  the  secret  which 
would  transform  the  little  village  into  the  great  city. 
With  all  the  burdens  removed  which  now  oppress  indus- 
try and  hamper  exchange,  the  production  of  wealth 
would  go  on  with  a  rapidity  now  undreamed  of.  This, 
in  its  turn,  would  lead  to  an  increase  in  the  value  of  land 
— a  new  surplus  which  society  might  take  for  general 
purposes.  And  released  from  the  diflBculties  which  at- 
tend the  collection  of  revenue  in  a  way  that  begets 
corruption  and  renders  legislation  the  tool  of  special 
interests,  society  could  assume  functions  which  the  in- 
creasing complexity  of  life  makes  it  desirable  to  assume, 
but  which  the  prospect  of  political  demoralization  under 
the  present  system  now  leads  thoughtful  men  to  shrink 
from. 

Consider  the  effect  upon  the  production  of  wealth. 

To  abolish  the  taxation  which,  acting  and  reacting. 


432  EFFECTS  OP  THE  REMEDYo  Booh  IX. 

now  hampers  every  wheel  of  exchange  and  presses  upon 
every  form  of  industry,  would  be  like  removing  an  im- 
mense weight  from  a  powerful  spring.  Imbued  with 
fresh  energy,  production  would  start  into  new  life,  and 
trade  would  receive  a  stimulus  which  would  be  felt  to 
the  remotest  arteries.  The  present  method  of  taxation 
operates  upon  exchange  like  artificial  deserts  and  moun- 
tains; it  costs  more  to  get  goods  through  a  custom  house 
than  it  does  to  carry  them  around  the  world.  It  operates 
upon  energy,  and  industry,  and  skill,  and  thrift,  like  a 
fine  upon  those  qualities.  If  I  have  worked  harder  and 
built  myself  a  good  house  while  you  have  been  contented 
to  live  in  a  hovel,  the  tax-gatherer  now  comes  annually 
to  make  me  pay  a  penalty  for  my  energy  and  industry, 
by  taxing  me  more  than  you.  If  1  have  saved  while  you 
wasted,  I  am  mulct,  while  you  are  exempt.  If  a  man 
build  a  ship  we  make  him  pay  for  his  temerity,  as  though 
he  had  done  an  injury  to  the  state;  if  a  railroad  be 
opened,  down  comes  the  tax-collector  upon  it,  as  though 
it  were  a  public  nuisance;  if  a  manufactory  be  erected 
we  levy  upon  it  an  annual  sum  which  would  go  far  toward 
making  a  handsome  profit.  We  say  we  want  capital,  but 
if  any  one  accumulate  it,or  bring  it  among  us,  we  charge 
him  for  it  as  though  we  were  giving  him  a  privilege. 
We  punish  with  a  tax  the  man  who  covers  barren  fields 
with  ripening  grain;  we  fine  him  who  puts  up  machinery, 
>nd  him  who  drains  a  swamp.  How  heavily  these  taxes 
burden  production  only  those  realize  who  have  attempted 
to  follow  our  system  of  taxation  through  its  ramifications, 
for,  as  I  have  before  said,  the  heaviest  part  of  taxation 
is  that  which  falls  in  increased  prices.  But  manifestly 
these  taxes  are  in  their  nature  akin  to  the  Egyptian 
Pasha's  tax  upon  date-trees.  If  they  do  not  cause  the 
trees  to  be  cut  down,  they  at  least  discourage  the 
planting. 

To  abolish  these  taxes  would  'be  to  lift  the  whole  enor- 


Chap.L  UPON  THE  PRODUCTION  OP  WEALTH.  433 

mous  weight  of  taxation  from  productive  industry.  The 
needle  of  the  seamstress  and  the  great  manufactory;  the 
cart-horse  and  the  locomotive;  the  fishing  boat  and  the 
steamship;  the  farmer's  plow  and  the  merchant's  stock, 
would  be  alike  untaxed.  All  would  be  free  to-make  or 
to  save,  to  buy  or  to  sell,  unfined  by  taxes,  unannoyed 
by  the  tax-gatherer.  Instead  of  saying  to  the  producer, 
as  it  does  now,  "The  more  you  add  to  the  general  wealth 
the  more  shall  you  be  taxed!"  the  state  would  say  to 
the  producer,  "Be  as  industrious,  as  thrifty,  as  enter- 
prising as  you  choose,  you  shall  have  your  full  reward! 
You  shall  not  be  fined  for  making  two  blades  of  grass 
grow  where  one  grew  before;  you  shall  not  be  taxed  for 
adding  to  the  aggregate  wealth." 

And  will  not  the  community  gain  by  thus  refusing  to 
kill  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  eggs;  by  thus  refrain- 
ing from  muzzling  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn; 
by  thus  leaving  to  industry,  and  thrift,  and  skill,  their 
natural  reward,  full  and  unimpaired?  For  there  is  to 
the  community  also  a  natural  reward.  The  law  of  society 
is,  each  for  all,  as  well  as  all  for  each.  No  one  can  keep 
to  himself  the  good  he  may  do,  any  more  than  he  can 
keep  the  bad.  Every  productive  enterprise,  besides  its 
return  to  those  who  undertake  it,  yields  collateral  advan- 
tages to  others.  If  a  man  plant  a  fruit-tree,  his  gain  is 
that  he  gathers  the  fruit  in  its  time  and  season.  But  in 
addition  to  his  gain,  there  is  a  gain  to  the  whole  com- 
munity. Others  than  the  owner  are  benefited  by  the 
increased  supply  of  fruit;  the  birds  which  it  shelters  fly 
far  and  wide;  the  rain  which  it  helps  to  attract  falls  not 
alone  on  his  field;  and,  even  to  the  eye  which  rests  upon 
it  from  a  distance,  it  brings  a  sense  of  beauty.  And  so 
with  everything  else.  The  building  of  a  house,  a  fac- 
tory, a  ship,  or  a  railroad,  benefits  others  besides  those 
who  get  the  direct  profits.  Nature  laughs  at  a  miser. 
He  is  like  the  squirrel  who  buries  his  nuts  and  refrains 


434  EFFECTS  OP  THE  REMEDT.  Booh  IX. 

from  digging  them  up  again.  Lol  they  sprout  and  grow 
into  trees.  In  fine  linen,  steeped  in  costly  spices,  the 
mummy  is  laid  away.  Thousands  and  thousands  of  years 
thereafter,  the  Bedouin  cooks  his  food  by  a  fire  of  its 
encasings,  it  generates  the  steam  by  which  the  traveler 
is  whirled  on  his  way,  or  it  passes  into  far-ofE  lands  to 
gratify  the  curiosity  of  another  race.  The  bee  fills  the 
hollow  tree  with  honey,  and  along  comes  the  bear  or  the 
man. 

Well  may  the  community  leave  to  the  individual  pro- 
ducer all  that  prompts  him  to  exertion;  well  may  it  let 
the  laborer  have  the  full  reward  of  his  labor,  and  the 
capitalist  the  full  return  of  his  capital.  For  the  more 
that  labor  and  capital  produce,  the  greater  grows  the 
common  wealth  in  which  all  may  share.  And  in  the 
value  or  rent  of  land  is  this  general  gain  expressed  in  a 
definite  and  concrete  form.  Here  is  a  fund  which  the 
state  may  take  while  leaving  to  labor  and  capital  their 
full  reward.  With  increased  activity  of  production  this 
would  commensurately  increase. 

And  to  shift  the  burden  of  taxation  from  production 
and  exchange  to  the  value  or  rent  of  land  would  not 
merely  be  to  give  new  stimulus  to  the  production  of 
wealth;  it  would  be  to  open  new  opportunities.  For 
under  this  system  no  one  would  care  to  hold  land  unless 
to  use  it,  and  land  now  withheld  from  use  would  every- 
where be  thrown  open  to  improvement. 

The  selling  price  of  land  would  fall;  land  speculation 
would  receive  its  death  blow;  land  monopolization  would 
no  longer  pay.  Millions  and  millions  of.  acres  from 
which  settlers  are  now  shut  out  by  high  prices  would 
be  abandoned  by  their  present  owners  or  sold  to  set- 
tlers upon  nominal  terms.  And  this  not  merely  on 
the  frontiers,  but  within  what  are  now  considered  well 
settled  districts.  Within  a  hundred  miles  of  San  Fran- 
cisco would  be  thus  thrown  open  land  enough  to  support. 


Chap.  I.  UPON  THE  PKODUCTIOK  OF  WEALTH.  435 

even  with  present  modes  of  cultivation,  an  agricultural 
population  equal  to  that  now  scattered  from  the  Oregon 
boundary  to  the  Mexican  line — a  distance  of  800  miles. 
In  the  same  degree  would  this  be  true  of  most  of  the 
Western  States,  and  in  a  great  degree  of  the  older  Eastern 
States,  for  even  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  is  popula- 
tion yet  sparse  as  compared  with  the  capacity  of  the  land. 
And  even  in  densely  populated  England  would  such  a 
policy  throw  open  to  cultivation  many  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  acres  now  held  as  private  parks,  deer  preserves, 
and  shooting  grounds. 

For  this  simple  device  of  placing  all  taxes  on  the  value 
of  land  would  be  in  effect  putting  up  the  land  at  auction 
to  whomsoever  would  pay  the  highest  rent  to  the  state. 
The  demand  for  land  fixes  its  value,and  hence,if  taxes  were 
placed  so  as  very  nearly  to  consume  that  value,  the  man 
who  wished  to  hold  land  without  using  it  would  have  to 
pay  very  nearly  what  it  would  be  worth  to  any  one  who 
wanted  to  use  it. 

And  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  would  apply,  not 
merely  to  agricultural  land,  but  to  all  land.  Mineral 
land  would  be  thrown  open  to  use,  just  as  agricultural 
land;  and  in  the  heart  of  a  city  no  one  could  afford  to 
keep  land  from  its  most  profitable  use,  or  on  the  out- 
skirts to  demand  more  for  it  than  the  use  to  which  it 
could  at  the  time  be  put  would  warrant.  Everywhere 
that  land  had  attained  a  value,  taxation,  instead  of 
operating,  as  now,  as  a  fine  upon  improvement,  would 
operate  to  force  improvement.  Whoever  planted  an 
orchard,  or  sowed  a  field,  or  built  a  house,  or  erected  a 
manufactory,  no  matter  how  costly,  would  have  no  more 
to  pay  in  taxes  than  if  he  kept  so  much  land  idle.  The 
monopolist  of  agricultural  land  would  be  taxed  as  much 
as  though  his  land  were  covered  with  houses  and  barns, 
with  crops  and  with  stock.  The  owner  of  a  vacant  city 
lot  would  have  to  pay  as  much  for  the  privilege  of  keep- 


436  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

ing  other  people  off  of  it  until  he  wanted  to  use  it,  as 
his  neighbor  who  has  a  fine  house  upon  his  lot.  It  would 
cost  as  much  to  keep  a  row  of  tumble-down  shanties 
upon  valuable  land  as  though  it  were  covered  with  a 
grand  hotel  or  a  pile  of  great  warehouses  filled  with 
costly  goods. 

Thus,  the  bonus  that  wherever  labor  is  most  produc- 
tive must  now  be  paid  before  labor  can  be  exerted  would 
disappear.  The  farmer  would  not  have  to  pay  out  half 
his  meaus,  or  mortgage  his  labor  for  years,  in  order  to 
obtain  land  to  cultivate;  the  builder  of  a  city  homestead 
would  not  have  to  lay  out  as  much  for  a  small  lot  as  for 
the  house  he  puts  upon  it;  the  company  that  proposed  to 
erect  a  manufactory  would  not  have  to  expend  a  great 
part  of  their  capital  for  a  site.  And  what  would  be  paid 
from  year  to  year  to  the  state  would  be  in  lien  of  all 
the  taxes  now  levied  upon  improvements,  machinery,  and 
stock. 

Consider  the  effect  of  such  a  change  upon  the  labor 
market.  Competition  would  no  longer  be  one-sided,  as 
now.  Instead  of  laborers  competing  with  each  other  for 
employment,  and  in  their  competition  cutting  down 
wages  to  the  point  of  bare  subsistence,  employers  would 
everywhere  be  competing  for  laborers,  and  wages  would 
rise  to  the  fair  earnings  of  labor.  For  into  the  labor 
market  would  have  entered  the  greatest  of  all  competi- 
tors for  the  employment  of  labor,  a  competitor  whose 
demand  cannot  be  satisfied  until  want  is  satisfied — the 
demand  of  labor  itself.  The  employers  of  labor  would 
not  have  merely  to  bid  against  other  employers,  all  feel- 
ing the  stimulus  of  greater  trade  and  increased  profits, 
but  against  the  ability  of  laborers  to  become  their  own 
employers  upon  the  natural  opportunities  freely  opened 
to  them  by  the  tax  which  prevented  monopolization. 

With  natural  opportunities  thus  free  to  labor;  with 
capital  and  improvements  exempt  from  tax,  and  exchange 


Chap.L  UPOK  THE  PRODUCTION  OF  WEALTH.  437 

released  from  restrictions,  the  spectacle  of  willing  men" 
unable  to  turn  their  labor  into  the  things  they  are  suffer- 
ing for  would  become  impossible;  the  recurring  parox- 
ysms which  paralyze  industry  would  cease;  every  wheel  of    " 
production  would  be  set  in  motion;  demand  would  keep 
pace  with  supply,  and  supply  with  demand;  trade  would     ] 
increase  in  every  direction,  and  wealth  augment  on  every ^'''^ 
hand. 


CHAPTER  II. 

OF  THE  EFFECT  UP02f  DISTRIBUTION    AND    THENCE  UPON 
PRODUCTION. 

But  great  as  they  thus  appear,  the  advantages  of  a  trans- 
ference of  all  public  burdens  to  a  tax  upon  the  value  of 
land  cannot  be  fully  appreciated  until  we  consider  the 
effect  upon  the  distribution  of  wealth. 

Tracing  out  the  cause  of  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth  which  appears  in  all  civilized  countries,  with  a 
constant  tendency  to  greater  and  greater  inequality  as 
material  progress  goes  on,  we  have  found  it  in  the  fact 
that,  as  civilization  advances,  the  ownership  of  land, 
now  in  private  hands,  gives  a  greater  and  greater  power 
of  appropriating  the  wealth  produced  by  labor  and  capital. 

Thus,  to  relieve  labor  and  capital  from  all  taxation, 
direct  and  indirect,  and  to  throw  the  burden  upon  rent, 
would  be,  as  far  as  it  went,  to  counteract  this  tendency 
to  inequality,  and,  if  it  went  so  far  as  to  take  in  taxation 
the  whole  of  rent,  the  cause  of  inequality  would  be  to- 
tally destroyed.  Eent,  instead  of  causing  inequality,  as 
now,  would  then  promote  equality.  Labor  and  capital 
would  then  receive  the  whole  produce,  minus  that  portion 
taken  by  the  state  in  the  taxation  of  land  values,  which, 
being  applied  to  public  purposes,  would  be  equally  dis- 
tributed in  public  benefits. 

That  is  to  say,  the  wealth  produced  in  every  commu- 
nity would  be  divided  into  two  portions.  One  part  would 
be  distributed  in  wages  and  interest  between  individual 
producers,  according  to  the  part  each  had  taken  in  the 
work  of  production;  the  other  part  would  go  to  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  to  be  distributed  in  public  benefits  to 


Chap.n.         UPON  THE   DISTRIBUTION   OF  WEALTH.  439 

all  its  members.  In  this  all  would  share  equally — the 
weak  with  the  strong,  young  children  and  decrepit  old 
men,  the  maimed,  the  halt,  and  the  blind,  as  well  as  the 
vigorous.  And  justly  so — for  while  one  part  represents 
the  result  of  individual  effort  in  production,  the  other 
represents  the  increased  power  with  which  the  commu- 
nity as  a  whole  aids  the  individual. 

Thus,  as  material  progress  tends  to  increase  rent,  were 
rent  taken  by  the  community  for  common  purposes  the 
very  cause  which  now  tends  to  produce  inequality  as 
material  progress  goes  on  would  then  tend  to  produce 
greater  and  greater  equality.  Fully  to  understand  this 
effect,  let  us  revert  to  principles  previously  worked  out. 

We  have  seen  that  wages  and  interest  must  everywhere 
be  fixed  by  the  rent  line  or  margin  of  cultivation — that 
is  to  say,  by  the  reward  which  labor  and  capital  can 
secure  on  land  for  which  no  rent  is  paid;  that  the  aggre- 
gate amount  of  wealth,  which  the  aggregate  of  labor  and 
capital  employed  in  production  will  receive,  will  be  the 
amount  of  wealth  produced  (or  rather,  when  we  consider 
taxes,  the  net  amount),  minus  what  is  taken  as  rent. 

We  have  seen  that  with  material  progress,  as  it  is  at 
present  going  on,  there  is  a  twofold  tendency  to  the  ad- 
vance of  rent.  Both  are  to  the  increase  of  the  proportion 
of  the  wealth  produced  which  goes  as  rent,  and  to  the 
decrease  of  the  proportion  which  goes  as  wages  and  in- 
terest. But  the  first,  or  natural  tendency,  which  results 
from  the  laws  of  social  development,  is  to  the  increase  of 
rent  as  a  quantity,  without  the  reduction  of  wages  and 
interest  as  quantities,  or  even  with  their  quantitative 
increase.  The  other  tendency,  which  results  from  the 
unnatural  appropriation  of  land  to  private  ownership,  is 
to  the  increase  of  rent  as  a  quantity  by  the  reduction  of 
wages  and  interest  as  quantities. 

Now,  it  is  evident  that  to  take  rent  in  taxation  for 
public  purposes,  which  virtually  abolishes  private  owner- 


440  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  ZX. 

ship  in  land,  would  be  to  destroy  the  tendency  to  an 
absolute  decrease  in  wages  and  interest,  by  destroying 
the  speculative  monopolization  of  land  and  the  specula- 
tive increase  in  rent.  It  would  be  very  largely  to  in- 
crease wages  and  interest,  by  throwing  open  natural 
opportunities  now  monopolized  and  reducing  the  price 
of  land.  Labor  and  capital  would  thus  not  merely  gain 
what  is  now  taken  from  them  in  taxation,  but  would  gain 
by  the  positive  decline  in  rent  caused  by  the  decrease  in 
speculative  land  values.  A  new  equilibrium  would  be 
established,  at  which  the  common  rate  of  wages  and  in- 
terest would  be  much  higher  than  now. 

But  this  new  equilibrium  established,  further  advances 
in  productive  power,  and  the  tendency  in  this  direction 
would  be  greatly  accelerated,  would  result  in  still  in- 
creasing rent,  not  at  the  expense  of  wages  and  interest, 
but  by  new  gains  in  production,  which,  as  rent  would  be 
taken  by  the  community  for  public  uses,  would  accrue  to 
the  advantage  of  every  member  of  the  community. 
Thus,  as  material  progress  went  on,  the  condition  of  the 
masses  would  constantly  improve.  Not  merely  one  class 
would  become  richer,  but  all  would  become  richer;  not 
merely  one  class  would  have  more  of  the  necessaries, 
conveniences,  and  elegancies  of  life,  but  all  would  have 
more.  For,  the  increasing  power  of  production,  which 
comes  with  increasing  population,  with  every  new  dis- 
covery in  the  productive  arts,  with  every  labor-saving 
invention,  with  every  extension  and  facilitation  of  ex- 
changes, could  be  monopolized  by  none.  That  part  of 
the  benefit  which  did  not  go  directly  to  increase  the  re- 
ward of  labor  and  capital  would  go  to  the  state — that  is 
to  say,  to  the  whole  community.  With  all  the  enormous 
advantages,  material  and  mental,  of  a  dense  population, 
would  be  united  the  freedom  and  equality  that  can  now 
be  found  only  in  new  and  sparsely  settled  districts. 

And,  then,  consider  how  equalization  in  the  distribu. 


Chap.n.         UPON  THE  DISTRIBUTIOISr  OP  WEALTH.  441 

tion  of  wealth  would  react  upon  production,  everywhere 
preventing  waste,  everywhere  increasing  power. 

If  it  were  possible  to  express  in  figures  the  direct 
pecuniary  loss  which  society  suffers  from  the  social  mal- 
adjustments which  condemn  large  classes  to  poverty  and 
vice,  the  estimate  would  be  appalling.  England  main- 
tains over  a  million  paupers  on  official  charity;  the  city 
of  New  York  alone  spends  over  seven  million  dollars  a 
year  in  a  similar  way.  But  what  is  spent  from  public 
funds,  what  is  spent  by  charitable  societies  and  what  is 
spent  in  individual  charity,  would,  if  aggregated,  be  but 
the  first  and  smallest  item  in  the  account.  The  potential 
earnings  of  the  labor  thus  going  to  waste,  the  cost  of  the 
reckless,  improvident  and  idle  habits  thus  generated;  the 
pecuniary  loss,  to  consider  nothing  more,  suggested  by 
the  appalling  statistics  of  mortality,  and  especially  infant 
mortality,  among  the  poorer  classes;  the  waste  indicated 
by  the  gin  palaces  or  low  groggeries  which  increase  as 
poverty  deepens;  the  damage  done  by  the  vermin  of 
society  that  are  bred  of  poverty  and  destitution — the 
thieves,  prostitutes,  beggars,  and  tramps;  the  cost  of 
guarding  society  against  them,  are  all  items  in  the  sum 
which  the  present  unjust  and  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth  takes  from  the  aggregate  which,  with  present 
means  of  production,  society  might  enjoy.  Nor  yet  shall 
we  have  completed  the  account.  The  ignorance  and 
vice,  the  recklessness  and  immorality  engendered  by  the 
inequality  in  the  distribution  of  wealth  show  themselves 
in  the  imbecility  and  corruption  of  government;  and 
the  waste  of  public  revenues,  and  the  still  greater  waste 
involved  in  the  ignorant  and  corrupt  abuse  of  public 
powers  and  functions,  are  their  legitimate  consequences. 

But  the  increase  in  wages,  and  the  opening  of  new 
avenues  of  employment  which  would  result  from  the 
appropriation  of  rent  to  public  purposes,  would  not 
merely  stop  these  wastes  and  relieve  society  of  these 


aSt  EFFECTS  OF  THE  EEMEDY.  Book  IX. 

enormous  losses;  new  power  wonld  be  added  to  labor. 
It  is  but  a  truism  that  labor  is  most  productive  where  its 
wages  are  largest.  Poorly  paid  labor  is  ineflScient  labor, 
the  world  over. 

What  is  remarked  between  the  eflBciency  of  labor  in 
the  agricultural  districts  of  England  where  different 
rates  of  wages  prevail;  what  Brassey  noticed  as  between 
the  work  done  by  his  better  paid  English  navvies  and  that 
done  by  the  worse  paid  labor  of  the  continent;  what  was 
evident  in  the  United  States  as  between  slave  labor  and 
free  labor;  what  is  seen  by  the  astonishing  number  of 
mechanics  or  servants  required  in  India  or  China  to  get 
anything  done,  is  universally  true.  The  efficiency  of 
labor  always  increases  with  the  habitual  wages  of  labor — 
for  high  wages  mean  increased  self-respect,  intelligence, 
hope,  and  energy.  Man  is  not  a  machine,  that  will  do 
so  much  and  no  more;  he  is  not  an  animal,  whose  powers 
may  reach  thus  far  and  no  further.  It  is  mind,  not 
muscle,  which  is  the  great  agent  of  production.  The 
physical  power  evolved  in  the  human  frame  is  one  of 
the  weakest  of  forces,  but  for  the  human  intelligence 
the  resistless  currents  of  nature  flow,  and  matter  be- 
comes plastic  to  the  human  will.  To  increase  the  com- 
forts, and  leisure,  and  independence  of  the  masses  is  to 
increase  their  intelligence;  it  is  to  bring  the  brain  to  the 
aid  of  the  hand;  it  is  to  engage  in  the  common  work  of 
life  the  faculty  which  measures  the  animalcule  and  traces 
the  orbits  of  the  stars! 

Who  can  say  to  what  infinite  powers  the  wealth-pro- 
ducing capacity  of  labor  may  not  be  raised  by  social 
adjustments  which  will  give  to  the  producers  of  wealth 
their  fair  proportion  of  its  advantages  and  enjoyments! 
With  present  processes  the  gain  would  be  simply  incal- 
culable, but  just  as  wages  are  high,  so  do  the  invention 
and  utilization  of  improved  processes  and  machinery  go 
«n  with  greater  rapidity  and  ease.     That  the  wheat  crops 


Chap.  II.         UPON  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH.  443 

of  Southern  Eussia  are  still  reaped  with  the  scythe  and 
beaten  out  with  the  flail  is  simply  because  wages  are 
there  so  low.  American  invention,  American  aptitude 
for  labor-saving  processes  and  machinery  are  the  result 
of  the  comparatively  high  wages  that  have  prevailed  in 
the  United  States.  Had  our  producers  been  condemned 
to  the  low  reward  of  the  Egyptian  fellah  or  Chinese 
coolie,  we  would  be  drawing  water  by  hand  and  trans- 
porting goods  on  the  shoulders  of  men.  The  increase 
in  the  reward  of  labor  and  capital  would  still  further 
stimulate  invention  and  hasten  the  adoption  of  improved 
processes,  and  these  would  truly  appear,  what  in  them- 
selves they  really  are — an  unmixed  good.  The  injurious 
effects  of  labor-saving  machinery  upon  the  working 
classes,  that  are  now  so  often  apparent,  and  that,  in 
spite  of  all  argument,  make  so  many  people  regard 
machinery  as  an  evil  instead  of  a  blessing,  would  disap- 
pear. Every  new  power  engaged  in  the  service  of  man 
would  improve  the  condition  of  all.  And  from  the  gen- 
eral intelligence  and  mental  activity  springing  from  this 
general  improvement  of  condition  would  come  new  de- 
velopments of  power  of  which  we  as  yet  cannot  dream. 

But  I  shall  not  deny,  and  do  not  wish  to  lose  sight  of 
the  fact,  that  while  thus  preventing  waste  and  thus  add- 
ing to  the  eiaficiency  of  labor,  the  equalization  in  the  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  that  would  result  from  the  simple 
plan  of  taxation  that  I  propose,  must  lessen  the  intensity 
with  which  wealth  is  pursued.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  a 
condition  of  society  in  which  no  one  need  fear  poverty, 
no  one  would  desire  great  wealth — at  least,  no  one  would 
take  the  [trouble  to  strive  and  to  strain  for  it  as  men  do 
now.  For,  certainly,  the  spectacle  of  men  who  have  only 
a  few  years  to  live,  slaving  away  their  time  for  the  sake 
of  dying  rich,  is  in  itself  so  unnatural  and  absurd,  that 
in  a  state  of  society  where  the  abolition  of  the  fear  of 
want  had  dissipated  the  envious  admiration  with  which 


(44  EPPECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

the  masses  of  men  now  regard  the  possession  of  great 
riches,  whoever  would  toil  to  acquire  more  than  he  cared 
to  use  would  be  looked  upon  as  we  would  now  look  on  a 
man  who  would  thatch  his  head  with  half  a  dozen  hats, 
or  walk  around  in  the  hot  sun  with  an  overcoat  on. 
"When  every  one  is  sure  of  being  able  to  get  enough,  no 
one  will  care  to  make  a  pack-horse  of  himself. 

And  though  this  incentive  to  production  be  with- 
drawn, can  we  not  spare  it?  Whatever  may  have  been 
its  oflBce  in  an  earlier  stage  of  development,  it  is  not 
needed  now.  The  dangers  that  menace  our  civilization 
do  not  come  from  the  weakness  of  the  springs  of  produc- 
^  tion.  What  it  suffers  from,  and  what,  if  a  remedy  be 
/not  applied,  it  must  die  from,  is  unequal  distribution! 
Nor  would  the  removal  of  this  incentive,  regarded 
only  from  the  standpoint  of  production,  be  an  unmixed 
loss.  For,  that  the  aggregate  of  production  is  greatly 
reduced  by  the  greed  with  which  riches  are  pursued,  is 
one  of  the  most  obtrusive  facts  of  modern  society. 
While,  were  this  insane  desire  to  get  rich  at  any  cost 
lessened,  mental  activities  now  devoted  to  scraping  to- 
gether riches  would  be  translated  into  far  higher  spheres 
of  usefulness. 


CHAPTER    III. 

OP  THE  EFFECT  UPON  INDIVIDUALS  AND  CLASSES. 

When  it  is  first  proposed  to  put  all  taxes  upon  the 
value  of  land,  and  thus  confiscate  rent,  all  land  holders 
are  likely  to  take  the  alarm,  and  there  will  not  be  want- 
ing appeals  to  the  fears  of  small  farm  and  homestead 
owners,  who  will  be  told  that  this  is  a  proposition  to  rob 
them  of  their  hard-earned  property.     But  a  moment's 
reflection  will  show  that  this   proposition  should  com- 
mend itself  to  all  whose  interests  as  land  holders  do  not 
largely  exceed  their  interests  as  laborers  or  capitalists, 
or  both.     And    further    consideration  will    show   that 
though  the  large  land  holders  may  lose  relatively,  yet 
even  in  their  case  there  will  be  an  absolute  gain.     For, 
the  increase  in  production  will  be  so  great  that  labor  and 
capital  will  gain  very  much  more  than  will  be  lost  to  V 
private  land  ownership,  while  in  these  gains,  and  in  the  / 
greater  ones  involved  in  a  more  healthy  social  condition,  \ 
the  whole  community,  including  the  land  owners  them-/ 
selves,  will  share. 

In  a  preceding  chapter  I  have  gone  over  the  question 
of  what  is  due  to  the  present  land  holders,  and  have 
shown  that  they  have  no  claim  to  compensation.  But 
there  is  still  another  ground  on  which  we  may  dismiss  all 
idea  of  compensation.     They  will  not  really  be  injured. 

It  is  manifest,  of  course,  that  the  change  I  propose 
will  greatly  benefit  all  those  who  live  by  wages,  whether 
of  hand  or  of  head — laborers,  operatives,  mechanics, 
clerks,  professional  men  of  aU  sorts.  It  is  manifest, 
also,  that  it  will  benefit  all  those  who  live  partly  by  wages 


446  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Booh  IX. 

and  partly  by  the  earnings  of  their  capital — storekeepers, 
merchants,  manufacturers,  employing  or  undertaking 
producers  and  exchangers  of  all  sorts — from  the  peddler 
or  drayman  to  the  railroad  or  steamship  owner — and  it 
is  likewise  manifest  that  it  will  increase  the  incomes  of 
those  whose  incomes  are  drawn  from  the  earnings  of 
capital,  or  from  investments  other  than  in  lands,  save 
perhaps  the  holders  of  government  bonds  or  other  securi- 
ties bearing  fixed  rates  of  interest,  which  will  probably 
depreciate  in  selling  value,  owing  to  the  rise  in  the  gen- 
eral rate  of  interest,  though  the  income  from  them  will 
remain  the  same. 

Take,  now,  the  case  of  the  homestead  owner — the 
mechanic,  storekeeper,  or  professional  man  who  has 
secured  himself  a  house  and  lot,  where  he  lives,  and 
which  he  contemplates  with  satisfaction  as  a  place  from 
which  his  family  cannot  be  ejected  in  case  of  his  death. 
He  will  not  be  injured;  on  the  contrary,  he  will  be  the 
gainer.  The  selling  value  of  his  lot  will  diminish — 
theoretically  it  will  entirely  disappear.  But  its  useful- 
nes  to  him  will  not  disappear.  It  will  serve  his  purpose 
as  well  as  ever.  While,  as  the  value  of  all  other  lots  will 
diminish  or  disappear  in  the  same  ratio,  he  retains  the 
same  security  of  always  having  a  lot  that  he  had  before. 
That  is  to  say,  he  is  a  loser  only  as  the  man  who  has 
bought  himself  a  pair  of  boots  may  be  said  to  be  a  loser 
by  a  subsequent  fall  in  the  price  of  boots.  His  boots 
will  be  just  as  useful  to  him,  and  the  next  pair  of  boots 
he  can  get  cheaper.  So,  to  the  homestead  owner,  his  lot 
will  be  as  useful,  and  should  he  look  forward  to  getting 
a  larger  lot,  or  having  his  children,  as  they  grow  up, 
get  homesteads  of  their  own,  he  will,  even  in  the  matter 
of  lots,  be  the  gainer.  And  in  the  present,  other  things 
considered,  he  will  be  much  the  gainer.  For  though  he 
will  have  more  taxes  to  pay  upon  his  land,  he  will  be  re- 
leased from  taxes  upon    his   house   and  improvements. 


Chap.  III.  UPON  INDIVIDUALS  AND   CLASSES.  447 

upon  his  furniture  and  personal  property,  upon  all  that 
he  and  his  family  eat,  drink,  and  wear,  while  his  earn- 
ings will  be  largely  increased  by  the  rise  of  wages,  the 
constant  employment,  and  the  increased  briskness  of 
trade.  His  only  loss  will  be,  if  he  wants  to  sell  his  lot 
without  getting  another,  and  this  will  be  a  small  loss 
compared  with  the  great  gain. 

And  so  with  the  farmer.  I  speak  not  now  of  the 
farmers  who  never  touch  the  handles  of  a  plow,  who  cul- 
tivate thousands  of  acres  and  enjoy  incomes  like  those  of 
the  rich  Southern  planters  before  the  war;  but  of  the 
working  farmers  who  constitute  such  a  large  class  in  the 
United  States — men  who  own  small  farms,  which  they 
cultivate  with  the  aid  of  their  boys,  and  perhaps  some 
hired  help,  and  who  in  Europe  would  be  called  peasant 
proprietors.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  appear  to  these  men 
until  they  understand  the  full  bearings  of  the  proposi- 
tion, of  all  classes  above  that  of  the  mere  laborer  they 
have  most  to  gain  by  placing  all  taxes  upon  the  value 
of  land.  That  they  do  not  now  get  as  good  a  living  as 
their  hard  work  ought  to  give  them,  they  generally  feel, 
though  they  may  not  be  able  to  trace  the  cause.  The 
fact  is  that  taxation,  as  now  levied,  falls  on  them  with 
peculiar  severity.  They  are  taxed  on  all  their  improve- 
ments— houses,  barns,  fences,  crops,  stock.  The  per- 
sonal property  which  they  have  cannot  be  as  readily  con- 
cealed or  undervalued  as  can  the  more  valuable  kinds 
which  are  concentrated  in  the  cities.  They  are  not  only 
taxed  on  personal  property  and  improvements,  which  the 
owners  of  unused  land  escape,  but  their  land  is  generally 
taxed  at  a  higher  rate  than  land  held  on  speculation, 
simply  because  it  is  improved.  But  further  than  this, 
all  taxes  imposed  on  commodities,  and  especially  the 
taxes  which,  like  our  protective  duties,  are  imposed  with 
a  view  of  raising  the  prices  of  commodities,  fall  on  the 
farmer  without  mitigation.    For  iu  a  country  like  the 


448  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  ZK. 

United  States,  which  exports  agricultural  produce,  the 
farmer  cannot  be  protected.  Whoever  gains,  he  must 
lose.  Some  years  ago  the  Free  Trade  League  of  New 
York  published  a  broadside  containing  cuts  of  various 
articles  of  necessity  marked  with  the  duties  imposed  by 
the  tariff,  and  which  read  something  in  this  wise:  "The 
farmer  rises  in  the  morning  and  draws  on  his  pantaloons 
taxed  40  per  cent,  and  his  boots  taxed  30  per  cent.,  strik- 
ing a  light  with  a  match  taxed  200  per  cent.,"  and  so  on, 
following  him  through  the  day  and  throngh  life,  until, 
killed  by  taxation,  he  is  lowered  into  the  grave  with  a 
rope  taxed  45  per  cent.  This  is  but  a  graphic  illustra- 
tion of  the  manner  in  which  such  taxes  ultimately  fall. 
The  farmer  would  be  a  great  gainer  by  the  substitution 
of  a  single  tax  upon  the  value  of  land  for  all  these  taxes, 
for  the  taxation  of  land  values  would  fall  with  greatest 
weight,  not  upon  the  agricultural  districts,  where  land 
values  are  comparatively  small,  but  upon  the  towns  and 
cities  where  land  values  are  high;  whereas  taxes  upon 
personal  property  and  improvements  fall  as  heavily  in 
the  country  as  in  the  city.  And  in  sparsely  settled  dis- 
tricts there  would  be  hardly  any  taxes  at  all  for  the 
farmer  to  pay.  For  taxes,  being  levied  upon  the  value 
of  the  bare  land,  would  fall  as  heavily  upon  unimproved 
as  upon  improved  land.  Acre  for  acre,  the  improved 
and  cultivated  farm,  with  its  buildings,  fences,  orchard, 
crops,  and  stock  could  be  taxed  no  more  than  unused 
land  of  equal  quality.  The  result  would  be  that  specu- 
lative values  would  be  kept  down,  and  that  cultivated  and 
improved  farms  would  have  no  taxes  to  pay  until  the 
country  around  them  had  been  well  settled.  In  fact, 
paradoxical  as  it  may  at  first  seem  to  them,  the  effect  of 
putting  all  taxation  upon  the  value  of  land  would  be  to 
relieve  the  harder  working  farmers  of  all  taxation. 

But  the  great  gain  of  the  working  farmer  can  be  seen 
only  when  the  effect  upon  the  distribution  of  population 


Chap.  Ill  UPON  INDIVIDUALS  AND  CLASSES.  449 

is  considered.  The  destruction  of  speculative  land 
values  would  tend  to  diffuse  population  where  it  is  too 
dense  and  to  concentrate  it  where  it  is  too  sparse;  to 
substitute  for  the  tenement  house,  homes  surrounded  by 
gardens,  and  fully  to  settle  agricultural  districts  before 
people  were  driven  far  from  neighbors  to  look  for  land. 
The  people  of  the  cities  would  thus  get  more  of  the  pure 
air  and  sunshine  of  the  country,  the  people  of  the  coun- 
try more  of  the  economies  and  social  life  of  the  city.  If, 
as  is  doubtless  the  case,  the  application  of  machinery 
tends  to  large  fields,  agricultural  population  will  assume 
the  primitive  form  and  cluster  in  villages.  The  life  of 
the  average  farmer  is  now  unnecessarily  dreary.  He  is 
not  only  compelled  to  work  early  and  late,  but  he  is  cut 
off  by  the  sparseness  of  population  from  the  conveniences, 
the  amusements,  the  educational  facilities,  and  the  social 
and  intellectual  opportunities  that  come  with  the  closer 
contact  of  man  with  man.  He  would  be  far  better  off  in 
all  these  respects,  and  his  labor  would  be  far  more  pro- 
ductive, if  he  and  those  around  him  held  no  more  land 
than  they  wanted  to  use.*  While  his  children,  as  they 
grew  up,  would  neither  be  so  impelled  to  seek  the  excite- 
ment of  a  city  nor  would  they  be  driven  so  far  away  to 
seek  farms  of  their  own.  Their  means  of  living  would 
be  in  their  own  hands,  and  at  home. 

In  short,  the  working  farmer  is  both  a  laborer  and  a 
capitalist,  as  well  as  a  land  owner,  and  it  is  by  his  labor 

*  Besides  the  enormous  increase  in  the  productive  power  of  labor 
which  would  result  from  the  better  distribution  of  population,  there 
would  be  also  a  similar  economy  in  the  productive  power  of  land. 
The  concentration  of  population  in  cities  fed  by  the  exhaustive  cul- 
tivation of  large,  sparsely  populated  areas,  results  in  a  literal  drain- 
ing into  the  sea  of  the  elements  of  fertility.  How  enormous  this 
waste  is  may  be  seen  from  the  calculations  that  have  been  made  as 
to  the  sewage  of  our  cities,  and  its  practical  result  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
diminishing  productiveness  of  agriculture  in  large  sections.  In  a 
great  part  of  the  United  States  we  are  steadily  exhausting  our  lands. 


460  EFFECTS  OP  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

and  capital  that  his  living  is  made.  His  loss  would  be 
nominal;  his  gain  would  be  real  and  great. 

In  varying  degrees  is  this  true  of  all  land  holders. 
Many  land  holders  are  laborers  of  one  sort  or  another. 
And  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  land  owner  not  a  laborer, 
who  is  not  also  a  capitalist — while  the  general  rule  is, 
that  the  larger  the  land  owner  the  greater  the  capitalist. 
So  true  is  this  that  in  common  thought  the  characters 
are  confounded.  Thus  to  put  all  taxes  on  the  value  of 
land,  while  it  would  be  largely  to  reduce  all  great  for- 
tunes, would  in  no  case  leave  the  rich  man  penniless. 
The  Duke  of  Westminster,  who  owns  a  considerable  part 
of  the  site  of  London,  is  probably  the  richest  land  owner 
in  the  world.  To  take  all  his  ground  rents  by  taxation 
would  largely  reduce  his  enormous  income,  but  would 
still  leave  him  his  buildings  and  all  the  income  from 
them,  and  doubtless  much  personal  property  in  various 
other  shapes.  He  would  still  have  all  he  could  by  any 
possibility  enjoy,  and  a  much  better  state  of  society  in 
which  to  enjoy  it. 

So  would  the  Astors  of  New  York  remain  very  rich. 
And  so,  I  think,  it  will  be  seen  throughout — this  measure 
would  make  no  one  poorer  but  such  as  could  be  made  a 
great  deal  poorer  without  being  really  hurt.  It  would 
cut  down  great  fortunes,  but  it  would  impoverish  no  one. 

Wealth  would  not  only  be  enormously  increased;  it 
would  be  equally  distributed.  I  do  not  mean  that  each 
individual  would  get  the  same  amount  of  wealth.  That 
would  not  be  equal  distribution,  so  long  as  different 
individuals  have  different  powers  and  different  desires. 
But  I  mean  that  wealth  would  be  distributed  in  accord- 
ance with  the  degree  in  which  the  industry,  skill,  knowl^ 
edge,  or  prudence  of  each  contributed  to  the  common 
stock.  The  great  cause  which  concentrates  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  those  who  do  not  produce,  and  takes  it 
from  the  hands  of  those  who  do,  would  be  gone.     The 


Chap.  in.  UPON  INDIVIDUALS  AND  CLASSES.  451 

inequalities  that  continued  to  exist  would  be  those  of  na- 
ture, not  the  artificial  inequalities  produced  by  the  denial 
of  natural  law.  The  non-producer  would  no  longer  roll 
in  luxury  while  the  producer  got  but  the  barest  necessi- 
ties of  animal  existence. 

The  monopoly  of  the  land  gone,  there  need  be  no  fear 
of  large  fortunes.  For  then  the  riches  of  any  individual 
must  consist  of  wealth,  properly  so-called — of  wealth, 
which  is  the  product  of  labor,  and  which  constantly 
tends  to  dissipation,  for  national  debts,  I  imagine,  would 
not  long  survive  the  abolition  of  the  system  from  which 
they  spring.  All  fear  of  great  fortunes  might  be  dis- 
missed, for  when  every  one  gets  what  he  fairly  earns,  no 
one  can  get  more  than  he  fairly  earns.  How  many  men 
are  there  who  fairly  earn  a  million  dollars? 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OF  THE  CHANGES  THAT  WOULD  BE  WROUGHT  IK    SOCIAL 
ORGANIZATIOlf  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE. 

We  are  dealing  only  with  general  principles.  There 
are  some  matters  of  detail — such  as  those  arising  from 
the  division  of  revenues  between  local  and  general  gov- 
ernments— which  upon  application  of  these  principles 
would  come  up,  but  these  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  dis- 
cuss. When  once  principles  are  settled,  details  will  be 
readily  adjusted. 

Nor  without  too  much  elaboration  is  it  possible  to 
notice  all  the  changes  which  would  be  wrought,  or  would 
become  possible,  by  a  change  which  would  readjust  the 
very  foundation  of  society,  but  to  some  main  features  let 
me  call  attention. 

Noticeable  among  these  is  the  great  simplicity  which 
would  become  possible  in  government.  To  collect  taxes, 
to  prevent  and  punish  evasions,  to  check  and  counter- 
check revenues  drawn  from  so  many  distinct  sources, 
now  make  up  probably  three-fourths,  perhaps  seven- 
eighths  of  the  business  of  government,  outside  of  the 
preservation  of  order,  the  maintenance  of  the  military 
arm,  and  the  administration  of  justice.  An  immense 
and  complicated  network  of  governmental  machinery 
would  thus  be  dispensed  with. 

In  the  administration  of  justice  there  would  be  a  like 
saving  of  strain.  Much  of  the  civil  business  of  our 
courts  arises  from  disputes  as  to  ownership  of  land. 
These  would  cease  when  the  state  was  virtually  acknowl- 
edged as  the  sole  owner  of  land,  and  all  occupiers  became 


Chap.  IV.     UPCN  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  453 

practically  rent-paying  tenants.  The  growth  of  morality 
consequent  upon  the  cessation  of  want  would  tend  to  a 
like  diminution  in  other  civil  business  of  the  courts, 
which  could  be  hastened  by  the  adoption  of  the  common 
sense  proposition  of  Bentham  to  abolish  all  laws  for  the 
collection  of  debts  and  the  enforcement  of  private  con- 
tracts. The  rise  of  wages,  the  opening  of  opportunities 
for  all  to  make  an  easy  and  comfortable  living,  would  at 
once  lessen  and  would  soon  eliminate  from  society  the 
thieves,  swindlers,  and  other  classes  of  criminals  who 
spring  from  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth.  Thus 
the  administration  of  the  criminal  law,  with  all  its  para- 
phernalia of  policemen,  detectives,  prisons,  and  peniten- 
tiaries, would,  like  the  administration  of  the  civil  law, 
cease  to  make  such  a  drain  upon  the  vital  force  and  atten- 
tion of  society.  We  should  get  rid,  not  only  of  many 
judges,  bailiffs,  clerks  and  prison  keepers,  but  of  the 
great  host  of  lawyers  who  are  now  maintained  at  the 
expense  of  producers;  and  talent  now  wasted  in  legal 
subtleties  would  be  turned  to  higher  pursuits. 

The  legislative,  judicial,  and  executive  functions  of 
government  would  in  this  way  be  vastly  simplified.  Nor 
can  I  think  that  the  public  debts  and  the  standing 
armies,  which  are  historically  the  outgrowth  of  the 
change  from  feudal  to  allodial  tenures,  would  long  re- 
main after  the  reversion  to  the  old  idea  that  the  land  of 
a  country  is  the  common  right  of  the  people  of  the  coun- 
try. The  former  could  readily  be  paid  off  by  a  tax  that 
would  not  lessen  the  wages  of  labor  nor  check  produc- 
tion, and  the  latter  the  growth  of  intelligence  and  inde- 
pendence among  the  masses,  aided,  perhaps,  by  the  prog- 
ress of  invention,  which  is  revolutionizing  the  military 
art,  must  soon  cause  to  disappear. 

Society  would  thus  approach  the  ideal  of  Jeffersonian 
democracy,  the  promised  land  of  Herbert  Spencer,  the 
abolition  of  government.     But  of  government  only  as  a 


454  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

directing  and  repressive  power.  It  would  at  the  same 
time,  and  in  the  same  degree,  become  possible  for  it  to 
realize  the  dream  of  socialism.  All  this  simplification 
and  abrogation  of  the  present  functions  of  government 
would  make  possible  the  assumption  of  certain  other 
functions  which  are  now  pressing  for  recognition.  Gov- 
ernment could  take  upon  itself  the  transmission  of  mes- 
sages by  telegraph,  as  well  as  by  mail;  of  building  and 
operating  railroads,  as  well  as  of  opening  and  maintain- 
ing common  roads.  "With  present  functions  so  simplified 
and  reduced,  functions  such  as  these  could  be  assumed 
without  danger  or  strain,  and  would  be  under  the  super- 
vision of  public  attention,  which  is  now  distracted. 
There  would  be  a  great  and  increasing  surplus  revenue 
from  the  taxation  of  land  values,  for  material  progress, 
which  would  go  on  with  greatly  accelerated  rapidity, 
would  tend  constantly  to  increase  rent.  This  revenue 
arising  from  the  common  property  could  be  applied  to 
the  common  benefit,  as  were  the  revenues  of  Sparta. 
We  might  not  establish  public  tables — they  would  be  un- 
necessary; but  we  could  establish  public  baths,  museums, 
libraries,  gardens,  lecture  rooms,  music  and  dancing 
halls,  theaters,  universities,  technical  schools,  shooting 
galleries,  play  grounds,  gymnasiums,  etc.  Heat,  light, 
and  motive  power,  as  well  as  water,  might  be  conducted 
through  our  streets  at  public  expense;  our  roads  be  lined 
with  fruit  trees;  discoverers  and  inventors  rewarded, 
scientific  investigations  supported;  and  in  a  thousand 
ways  the  public  revenues  made  to  foster  efforts  for  the 
public  benefit.  We  should  reach  the  ideal  of  the  social- 
ist, but  not  through  governmental  repression.  Govern- 
ment would  change  its  character,  and  would  become  the 
administration  of  a  great  co-operative  society.  It  would 
become  merely  the  agency  by  which  the  common  property 
was  administered  for  the  common  benefit. 
Does  this  seem  impracticable?    Consider  for  a  moment 


Chap.  IV.     UPON  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  455 

the  vast  changes  that  would  be  wrought  in  social  life  by 
a  change  which  would  assure  to  labor  its  full  reward; 
which  would  banish  want  and  the  fear  of  want;  and  give 
to  the  humblest  freedom  to  develop  in  natural  symmetry. 

In  thinking  of  the  possibilities  of  social  organization, 
we  are  apt  to  assume  that  greed  is  the  strongest  of  human 
motives,  and  that  systems  of  administration  can  be  safely 
based  only  upon  the  idea  that  the  fear  of  punishment  is 
necessary  to  keep  men  honest — that  selfish  interests  are 
always  stronger  than  general  interests.  Nothing  could 
be  further  from  the  truth. 

From  whence  springs  this  lust  for  gain,  to  gratify 
which  men  tread  everything  pure  and  noble  under  their 
feet;  to  which  they  sacrifice  all  the  higher  possibilities 
of  life;  which  converts  civility  into  a  hollow  pretense, 
patriotism  into  a  sham,  and  religion  into  hypocrisy; 
which  makes  so  much  of  civilized  existence  an  Ishma- 
elitish  warfare,  of  which  the  weapons  are  cunning  and 
fraud? 

Does  it  not  spring  from  the  existence  of  want?  Carlyle 
somewhere  says  that  poverty  is  the  hell  of  which  the 
modern  Englishman  is  most  afraid.  And  he  is  right. 
Poverty  is  the  open-mouthed,  relentless  hell  which  yawns 
beneath  civilized  society.  And  it  is  hell  enough.  The 
Vedaa  declare  no  truer  thing  than  when  the  wise  crow 
Bushanda  tells  the  eagle-bearer  of  Vishnu  that  the  keen- 
est pain  is  in  poverty.  For  poverty  is  not  merely  dep- 
rivation; it  means  shame,  degradation;  the  searing  of 
the  most  sensitive  parts  of  our  moral  and  mental  nature  as 
with  hot  irons;  the  denial  of  the  strongest  impulses  and 
the  sweetest  affections;  the  wrenching  of  the  most  vital 
nerves.  You  love  your  wife,  you  love  your  children; 
but  would  it  not  be  easier  to  see  them  die  than  to  see 
them  reduced  to  the  pinch  of  want  in  which  large  classes 
in  every  highly  civilized  community  live?  The  strong- 
est of  animal  passions  is  that  with  which  we  cling  to  life. 


456  EFFECTS  OF  THE   REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

but  it  is  an  everyday  occurrence  in  civilized  societies  for 
men  to  put  poison  to  their  mouths  or  pistols  to  their 
heads  from  fear  of  poverty,  and  for  one  who  does  this 
there  are  probably  a  hundred  who  have  the  desire,  but 
are  restrained  by  instinctive  shrinking,  by  religious  con- 
siderations, or  by  family  ties. 

From  this  hell  of  poverty,  it  is  but  natural  that  men 
should  make  every  effort  to  escape.  With  the  impulse 
to  self-preservation  and  self-gratification  combine  nobler 
feelings,  and  love  as  well  as  fear  urges  in  the  struggle. 
Many  a  man  does  a  mean  thing,  a  dishonest  thing,  a 
greedy  and  grasping  and  unjust  thing,  in  the  eSort  to 
place  above  want,  or  the  fear  of  want,  mother  or  wife  or 
children. 

And  out  of  this  condition  of  things  arises  a  public 
opinion  which  enlists,  as  an  impelling  power  in  the 
struggle  to  grasp  and  to  keep,  one  of  the  strongest — 
perhaps  with  many  men  the  very  strongest — springs  of 
human  action.  The  desire  for  approbation,  the  feeling 
that  urges  us  to  win  the  respect,  admiration,  or  sym- 
pathy of  our  fellows,  is  instinctive  and  universal.  Dis- 
torted sometimes  into  the  most  abnormal  manifestations, 
it  may  yet  be  everywhere  perceived.  It  is  potent  with 
the  veriest  savage,  as  with  the  most  highly  cultivated 
member  of  the  most  polished  society;  it  shows  itself  with 
the  first  gleam  of  intelligence,  and  persists  to  the  last 
breath.  It  triumphs  over  the  love  of  ease,  over  the  sense 
of,  pain,  over  the  dread  of  death.  It  dictates  the  most 
trivial  and  the  most  important  actions. 

The  child  just  beginning  to  toddle  or  to  talk  will  make 
new  efforts  as  its  cunning  little  tricks  excite  attention 
and  laughter;  the  dying  master  of  the  world  gathers  his 
robes  around  him,  that  he  may  pass  away  as  becomes  a 
king;  Chinese  mothers  will  deform  their  daughters'  feet 
by  cruel  stocks,  European  women  will  sacrifice  their  own 
comfort  and  the  comfort  of   their  families  to  similar 


Cfcap.  7F.      UPON   SOCIAL   ORGANIZATION  AND   LIFE.  457 

dictates  of  fashion;  the  Polynesian,  that  he  may  excite 
admiration  by  his  beautiful  tattoo,  will  hold  himself  still 
while  his  flesh  is  torn  by  sharks'  teeth;  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indian,  tied  to  the  stake,  will  bear  the  most  fiendish 
tortures  without  a  moan,  and,  that  he  may  be  respected 
and  admired  as  a  great  brave,  will  taunt  his  tormentors 
to  new  cruelties.  It  is  this  that  leads  the  forlorn  hope; 
it  is  this  that  trims  the  lamp  of  the  pale  student;  it  is 
this  that  impels  men  to  strive,  to  strain,  to  toil,  and  to 
die.  It  is  this  that  raised  the  pyramids  and  that  fired 
the  Ephesian  dome. 

Now,  men  admire  what  they  desire.  How  sweet  to 
the  storm-stricken  seems  the  safe  harbor;  food  to  the 
hungry,  drink  to  the  thirsty,  warmth  to  the  shivering, 
rest  to  the  weary,  power  to  the  weak,  knowledge  to  him 
in  whom  the  intellectual  yearnings  of  the  soul  have  been 
aroused.  And  thus  the  sting  of  want  and  the  fear  of 
want  make  men  admire  above  all  things  the  possession  of 
riches,  and  to  become  wealthy  is  to  become  respected, 
and  admired,  and  influential.  Get  money — honestly,  if 
you  can,  but  at  any  rate  get  money!  This  is  the  lesson 
that  society  is  daily  and  hourly  dinning  in  the  ears  of  its 
members.  Men  instinctively  admire  virtue  and  truth, 
but  the  sting  of  want  and  the  fear  of  want  make  them 
even  more  strongly  admire  the  rich  and  sympathize  with 
the  fortunate.  It  is  well  to  be  honest  and  just,  and  men 
will  commend  it;  but  he  who  by  fraud  and  injustice  gets 
him  a  million  dollars  will  have  more  respect,  and  admira- 
tion, and  influence,  more  eye  service  and  lip  service,  if 
not  heart  service,  than  he  who  refuses  it.  The  one  may 
have  his  reward  in  the  future;  he  may  know  that  bis 
name  is  writ  in  the  Book  of  Life,  and  that  for  him  is  the 
white  robe  and  the  palm  branch  of  the  victor  against 
temptation;  but  the  other  has  his  reward  in  the  present. 
His  name  is  writ  in  the  list  of  "our  substantial  citizens;'* 
he  has  the  courtship  of  men  and  the  flattery  of  women; 


458  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IZ. 

the  best  pew  in  the  church  and  the  personal  regard  of 
the  eloquent  clergyman  who  in  the  name  of  Christ 
preaches  the  Gospel  of  Dives,  and  tones  down  into  a 
meaningless  flower  of  Eastern  speech  the  stern  metaphor 
of  the  camel  and  the  needle's  eye.  He  may  be  a  patron 
of  arts,  a  Maecenas  to  men  of  letters;  may  profit  by  the 
converse  of  the  intelligent,  and  be  polished  by  the  attri- 
tion of  the  refined.  His  alms  may  feed  the  poor,  and 
help  the  struggling,  and  bring  sunshine  into  desolate 
places;  and  noble  public  institutions  commemorate,  after 
he  is  gone,  his  name  and  his  fame.  It  is  not  in  the 
guise  of  a  hideous  monster,  with  horns  and  tail,  that 
Satan  tempts  the  children  of  men,  but  as  an  angel  of 
light.  His  promises  are  not  alone  of  the  kingdoms  of 
the  world,  but  of  mental  and  moral  principalities  and 
powers.  He  appeals  not  only  to  the  animal  appetites,  but 
to  the  cravings  that  stir  in  man  because  he  is  more  than 
an  animal. 

Take  the  case  of  those  miserable  "men  with  muck- 
rakes," who  are  to  be  seen  in  every  community  as  plainly 
as  Bunyan  saw  their  type  in  his  vision — who,  long  after 
they  have  accumulated  wealth  enough  to  satisfy  every 
desire,  go  on  working,  scheming,  striving  to  add  riches 
to  riches.  It  was  the  desire  "to  be  something;"  nay,  in 
many  cases,  the  desire  to  do  noble  and  generous  deeds, 
that  started  them  on  a  career  of  money  getting.  And 
what  compels  them  to  it  long  after  every  possible  need 
is  satisfied,  what  urges  them  still  with  unsatisfied  and 
ravenous  greed,  is  not  merely  the  force  of  tyrannous 
habit,  but  the  subtler  gratifications  which  the  possession 
of  riches  gives — the  sense  of  power  and  influence,  the 
sense  of  being  looked  up  to  and  respected,  the  sense  that 
their  wealth  not  merely  raises  them  above  want,  but 
makes  them  men  of  mark  in  the  community  in  which 
they  live.  It  is  this  that  makes  the  rich  man  so  loath  to 
part  with  his  money,  so  anxious  to  get  more. 


Oiap-JF.      UPON  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  459 

Against  temptations  that  thus  appeal  to  the  strongest 
impulses  of  our  nature,  the  sanctions  of  law  and  the  pre- 
cepts of  religion  can  effect  but  little;  and  the  wonder  is, 
not  that  men  are  so  self-seeking,  but  that  they  are  not 
much  more  so.  That  under  present  circumstances  men 
are  not  more  grasping,  more  unfaithful,  more  selfish 
than  they  are,  proves  the  goodness  and  fruitfulness  of 
human  nature,  the  ceaseless  flow  of  the  perennial  foun- 
tains from  which  its  moral  qualities  are  fed.  All  of  us 
have  mothers;  most  of  us  have  children,  and  so  faith, 
and  purity,  and  unselfishness  can  never  be  utterly  ban- 
ished from  the  world,  howsoever  bad  be  social  adjust- 
ments. 

But  whatever  is  potent  for  evil  may  be  made  potent 
for  good.  The  change  I  have  proposed  would  destroy 
the  conditions  that  distort  impulses  in  themselves  benefi- 
cent, and  would  transmute  the  forces  which  now  tend 
to  disintegrate  society  into  forces  which  would  tend  to 
unite  and  purify  it. 

Give  labor  a  free  field  and  its  full  earnings;  take  for 
the  benefit  of  the  whole  community  that  fund  which  the 
growth  of  the  community  creates,  and  want  and  the  fear 
of  want  would  be  gone.  The  springs  of  production 
would  be  set  free,  and  the  enormous  increase  of  wealth 
would  give  the  poorest  ample  comfort.  Men  would  no 
more  worry  about  finding  employment  than  they  worry 
about  finding  air  to  breathe;  they  need  have  no  more 
care  about  physical  necessities  than  do  the  lilies  of  the  field. 
The  progress  of  science,  the  march  of  invention,  the 
diffusion  of  knowledge,  would  bring  their  benefits  to  all. 

With  this  abolition  of  want  and  the  fear  of  want,  the 
admiration  of  riches  would  decay,  and  men  would  seek 
the  respect  and  approbation  of  their  fellows  in  other 
modes  than  by  the  acquisition  and  display  of  wealth.  In 
this  way  there  would  be  brought  to  the  management  of 
public  affairs,  and  the  administration  of  common  funds. 


460  EFFECTS  OP  THE  EEMBDY.  Book  IX. 

the  skill,  the  attention,  the  fidelity,  and  integrity  that 
can  now  be  secured  only  for  private  interests,  and  a  rail- 
road or  gas  works  might  be  operated  on  public  account, 
not  only  more  economically  and  efficiently  than  as  at 
present,  under  joint  stock  management,  but  as  econom- 
ically and  efficiently  as  would  be  possible  under  a  single 
ownership.  The  prize  of  the  Olympian  games,  that 
called  forth  the  most  strenuous  exertions  of  all  Greece, 
was  but  a  wreath  of  wild  olive;  for  a  bit  of  ribbon  men 
have  over  and  over  again  performed  services  no  money 
could  have  bought. 
^,  j  Shortsighted  is  the  philosophy  which  counts  on  selfish- 
^  /ness  as  the  master  motive  of  human  action.  It  is  blind 
to  facts  of  which  the  world  is  full.  It  sees  not  the 
present,  and  reads  not  the  past  aright.  If  you  would 
move  men  to  action,  to  what  shall  you  appeal?  Not  to 
their  pockets,  but  to  their  patriotism;  not  to  selfishness, 
but  to  sympathy.  Self-interest  is,  as  it  were,  a  mechan- 
ical force — potent,  it  is  true;  capable  of  large  and  wide 
results.  But  there  is  in  human  nature  what  may  be 
likened  to  a  chemical  force;  which  melts  and  fuses  and 
overwhelms;  to  which  nothing  seems  impossible.  "All 
that  a  man  hath  will  he  give  for  his  life" — that  is  self- 
(Interest.  But  in  loyalty  to  higher  impulses  men  will  give 
L  even  life. 

It  is  not  selfishness  that  enriches  the  annals  of  every 
people  with  heroes  and  saints.  It  is  not  selfishness  that 
on  every  page  of  the  world's  history  bursts  out  in  sudden 
splendor  of  noble  deeds  or  sheds  the  soft  radiance  of 
benignant  lives.  It  was  not  selfishness  that  turned 
Gautama's  back  to  his  royal  home  or  bade  the  Maid  of 
Orleans  lift  the  sword  from  the  altar;  that  held  the 
Three  Hundred  in  the  Pass  of  Thermopylae,  or  gathered 
into  VVinkelried's  bosom  the  sheaf  of  spears;  that 
chained  Vincent  de  Paul  to  the  bench  of  the  galley,  or 
brought    little  starving    children,   during    the    Indian 


Chap.  IV.      UPON  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  461 

famine,  tottering  to  the  relief  stations  with  yet  weaker 
starvelings  in  their  arms.  Call  it  religion,  patriotism, 
sympathy,  the  enthusiasm  for  humanity,  or  the  love  of 
God — give  it  what  name  you  will;  there  is  yet  a  force 
which  overcomes  and  drives  out  selfishness;  a  force 
which  is  the  electricity  of  the  moral  universe;  a  force 
beside  which  all  others  are  weak.  Everywhere  that  men 
have  lived  it  has  shown  its  power,  and  to-day,  as  ever, 
the  world  is  full  of  it.  To  be  pitied  is  the  man  who  has 
never  seen  and  never  felt  it.  Look  around!  among  com- 
mon men  and  women,  amid  the  care  and  the  struggle  of 
daily  life,  in  the  jar  of  the  noisy  street  and  amid  the 
squalor  where  want  hides — every  here  and  there  is  the 
darkness  lighted  with  the  tremulous  play  of  its  lambent 
flames.  He  who  has  not  seen  it  has  walked  with  shut 
eyes.  He  who  looks  may  see,  as  says  Plutarch,  that  ''the 
soul  has  a  principle  of  kindness  in  itself,  and  is  born  to 
love,  as  well  as  to  perceive,  think,  or  remember." 

And  this  force  of  forces — that  now  goes  to  waste  or    X 
assumes  perverted  forms — we  may  use  for  the  strengthen-         \ 
ing,   and  building  up,  and  ennobling  of  society,  if  we  ' 

but  will,  just  as  we  now  use  physical  forces  that  once 
seemed  but  powers  of  destruction.     All  we  have  to  do  is 
but  to  give  it  freedom  and  scope.     The  wrong  that  pro- 
duces inequality;  the  wrong  that  in  the  midst  of  abun- 
dance tortures  men  with  want  or  harries  them  with  the       \ 
fear  of  want;  that  stunts  them  physically,  degrades  them         ^  "=" 
intellectually,  and  distorts  them  morally,  is  what  alone 
prevents  harmonious  social  development.     For  "all  that 
is  from  the  gods  is  full  of  providence.     We  are  made  for      I 
co-operation — like  feet,  like  hands,  like  eyelids,  like  the      \ 
rows  of  the  upper  and  lower  teeth."  J 

There  are  people  into  whose  heads  it  never  enters  toC 
conceive  of  any  better  state  of  society  than  that  which   /  » 

now  exists — who  imagine  that  the  idea  that  there  could     (        '^' 
be  a  state  of  society  in  which  greed  would  be  banished,  ^  J 


46^  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

prisons  stand  empty,  individual  interests  be  subordinated 
to  general  interests,  and  no  one  seek  to  rob  or  to  oppress 
his  neighbor,  is  but  the  dream  of  impracticable  dreamers, 
for  whom  these  practical  level-headed  men,  who  pride 
themselves  on  recognizing  facts  as  they  are,  have  a 
hearty  contempt.  But  such  men — 'though  some  of  them 
write  books,  and  some  of  them  occupy  the  chairs  of  uni- 
versities, and  some  of  them  stand  in  pulpits — do  not  think. 

If  they  were  accustomed  to  dine  in  such  eating  houses 
as  are  to  be  found  in  the  lower  quarters  of  London  and 
Paris,  where  the  knives  and  forks  are  chained  to  the 
table,  they  would  deem  it  the  natural,  ineradicable  dis- 
position of  man  to  carry  ofE  the  knife  and  fork  with 
which  he  has  eaten. 

Take  a  company  of  well-bred  men  and  women  dining 
together.  There  is  no  struggling  for  food,  no  attempt 
on  the  part  of  any  one  to  get  more  than  his  neighbor;  no 
attempt  to  gorge  or  to  carry  off.  On  the  contrary,  each 
one  is  anxious  to  help  his  neighbor  before  he  partakes 
himself;  to  offer  to  others  the  best  rather  than  pick  it 
out  for  himself;  and  should  any  one  show  the  slightest 
disposition  to  prefer  the  gratification  of  his  own  appetite 
to  that  of  the  others,  or  in  any  way  to  act  the  pig  or 
pilferer,  the  swift  and  heavy  penalty  of  social  contempt 
and  ostracism  would  show  how  such  conduct  is  repro- 
bated by  common  opinion. 

All  this  is  so  common  as  to  excite  no  remark,  as  to 
seem  the  natural  state  of  things.  Yet  it  is  no  more 
natural  that  men  should  not  be  greedy  of  food  than  that 
they  should  not  be  greedy  of  wealth.  They  are  greedy 
of  food  when  they  are  not  assured  that  there  will  be  a 
fair  and  equitable  distribution  which  will  give  each 
enough.  But  when  these  conditions  are  assured,  they 
cease  to  be  greedy  of  food.  And  so  in  society,  as  at 
present  constituted,  men  are  greedy  of  wealth  because 
the  conditions  of  distribution  are  so  unjust  that  instead 


Chap.  IV.      UPON  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  463 

of  each  being  sure  of  enough,  many  are  certain  to  be 
condemned  to  want.  It  is  the  "devil  catch  the  hind- 
most" of  present  social  adjustments  that  causes  the  race 
and  scramble  for  wealth,  in  which  all  considerations  of 
justice,  mercy,  religion,  and  sentiment  are  trampled 
under  foot;  in  which  men  forget  their  own  souls,  and 
struggle  to  the  very  verge  of  the  gr^ve  for  what  they 
cannot  take  beyond.  But  an  equitable  distribution  of 
wealth,  that  would  exempt  all  from  the  fear  of  want, 
would  destroy  the  greed  of  wealth,  just  as  in  polite 
society  the  greed  of  food  has  been  destroyed. 

On  the  crowded  steamers  of  the  early  California  lines 
there  was  often  a  marked  difference  between  the  manners 
of  the  steerage  and  the  cabin,  which  illustrates  this  prin- 
ciple of  human  nature.  An  abundance  of  food  was  pro- 
vided for  the  steerage  as  for  the  cabin,  but  in  the  former 
there  were  no  regulations  which  insured  efficient  service, 
and  the  meals  became  a  scramble.  In  the  cabin,  on  the 
contrary,  where  each  was  allotted  his  place  and  there 
was  no  fear  that  every  one  would  not  get  enough,  there 
was  no  such  scrambling  and  waste  as  were  witnessed  i'n 
the  steerage.  The  difference  was  not  in  the  character  of 
the  people,  but  simply  in  this  fact.  The  cabin  passenger 
transferred  to  the  steerage  would  participate  in  the 
greedy  rush,  and  the  steerage  passenger  transferred  to 
the  cabin  would  at  once  become  decorous  and  polite. 
The  same  difference  would  show  itself  in  society  in 
general  were  the  present  unjust  distribution  of  wealth 
replaced  by  a  just  distribution. 

Consider  this  existing  fact  of  a  cultivated  and  refined 
society,  in  which  all  the  coarser  passions  are  held  in 
check,  not  by  force,  not  by  law,  but  by  common  opinion 
and  the  mutual  desire  of  pleasing.  If  this  is  possible 
for  a  part  of  a  community,  it  is  possible  for  a  whole  com- 
munity. There  are  states  of  society  in  which  every  one 
has  to  go  armed — in  which  every  one  has  to  hold  him- 


464  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Book  IX. 

self  in  readiness  to  defend  person  and  property  with  the 
strong  hand.  If  we  have  progressed  beyond  that,  we  may 
progress  still  further. 

But  it  may  be  said,  to  banish  want  and  the  fear  of 
want,  would  be  to  destroy  the  stimulus  to  exertion;  men 
would  become  simply  idlers,  and  such  a  happy  state  of 
general  comfort  and  content  would  be  the  death  of  prog- 
ress. This  is  the  old  slaveholders'  argument,  that  men 
can  be  driven  to  labor  only  with  the  lash.  Nothing  is 
more  untrue. 

Want  might  be  banished,  but  desire  would  remain. 
Man  is  the  unsatisfied  animal.  He  has  but  begun  to  ex- 
plore, and  the  universe  lies  before  him.  Each  step  that 
he  takes  opens  new  vistas  and  kindles  new  desires.  He 
is  the  constructive  animal;  he  builds,  he  improves,  he 
invents,  and  puts  together,  and  the  greater  the  thing  he 
does,  the  greater  the  thing  he  wants  to  do.  He  is  more 
than  an  animal.  Whatever  be  the  intelligence  that 
breathes  through  nature,  it  is  in  that  likeness  that  man 
is  made.  The  steamship,  driven  by  her  throbbing 
engines  through  the  sea,  is  in  kind,  though  not  in 
degree,  as  much  a  creation  as  the  whale  that  swims  be- 
neath. The  telescope  and  the  microscope,  what  are  they 
but  added  eyes,  which  man  has  made  for  himself;  the 
soft  webs  and  fair  colors  in  which  our  women  array  them- 
selves, do  they  not  answer  to  the  plumage  that  nature 
gives  the  bird?  Man  must  be  doing  something,  or  fancy 
that  he  is  doing  something,  for  in  him  throbs  the  creative 
impulse;  the  mere  basker  in  the  sunshine  is  not  a  natural, 
but  an  abnormal  man. 

As  soon  as  a  child  can  command  its  muscles,  it  will 
begin  to  make  mud  pies  or  dress  a  doll;  its  play  is  but  the 
imitation  of  the  work  of  its  elders;  its  very  destructive- 
ness  arises  from  the  desire  to  be  doing  something,  from 
the  satisfaction  of  seeing  itself  accomplish  something. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  for  the 


map.  TV.    upoisr  social  okoanization  and  life.        465 

sake  of  pleasure.  Our  very  amusements  amuse  only  as 
they  are,  or  simulate,  the  learning  or  the  doing  of  some- 
thing. The  moment  they  cease  to  appeal  either  to  our 
inquisitive  or  to  our  constructive  powers,  they  cease  to 
amuse.  It  will  spoil  the  interest  of  the  novel  reader  to 
be  told  just  how  the  story  will  end;  it  is  only  the  chance 
and  the  skill  involved  in  the  game  that  enable  the  card- 
player  to  "kill  time"  by  shuffling  bits  of  pasteboard. 
The  luxurious  frivolities  of  Versailles  were  possible  to 
human  beings  only  because  the  king  thought  he  was 
governing  a  kingdom  and  the  courtiers  were  in  pursuit 
of  fresh  honors  and  new  pensions.  People  who  lead 
what  are  called  lives  of  fashion  and  pleasure  must  have 
some  other  object  in  view,  or  they  would  die  of  ennui; 
they  support  it  only  because  they  imagine  that  they  are 
gaining  position,  making  friends,  or  improving  the 
chances  of  their  children.  Shut  a  man  up,  and  deny 
him  employment,  and  he  must  either  die  or  go  mad. 

It  is  not  labor  in  itself  that  is  repugnant  to  man;  it  is 
not  the  natural  necessity  for  exertion  which  is  a  curse. 
It  is  only  labor  which  produces  nothing — exertion  of 
which  he  cannot  see  the  results.  To  toil  day  after  day, 
and  yet  get  but  the  necessaries  of  life,  this  is  indeed 
hard;  it  is  like  the  infernal  punishment  of  compelling 
a  man  to  pump  lest  he  be  drowned,  or  to  trudge  on  a 
treadmill  lest  he  be  crushed.  But,  released  from  this 
necessity,  men  would  but  work  the  harder  and  the  bet- 
ter, for  then  they  would  work  as  their  inclinations  led 
them;  then  would  they  seem  to  be  really  doing  some- 
thing for  themselves  or  for  others.  Was  Humboldt's 
life  an  idle  one?  Did  Franklin  find  no  occupation  when 
he  retired  from  the  printing  business  with  enough  to  live 
on?  Is  Herbert  Spencer  a  laggard?  Did  Michael  Angelo 
paint  for  board  and  clothes? 

The  fact  is  that  the  work  which  improves  the  condi- 
tion of  mankind,  the  work  which  extends  knowledge  and 


466  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  Booh  IX. 

increases  power,  and  enriches  literature,  and  elevates 
thought,  is  not  done  to  secure  a  living.  It  is  not  the 
work  of  slaves,  driven  to  their  task  either  by  the  lash  of 
a  master  or  by  animal  necessities.  It  is  the  work  of  men 
who  perform  it  for  its  own  sake,  and  not  that  they  may 
get  more  to  eat  or  drink,  or  wear,  or  display.  In  a  state 
of  society  where  want  was  abolished,  work  of  this  sort 
would  be  enormously  increased. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  result  of  confiscating 
rent  in  the  manner  I  have  proposed  would  be  to  cause 
the  organization  of  labor,  wherever  large  capitals  were 
used,  to  assume  the  co-operative  form,  since  the  more 
equal  diffusion  of  wealth  would  unite  capitalist  and 
laborer  in  the  same  person.  But  whether  this  would  be 
BO  or  not  is  of  little  moment.  The  hard  toil  of  routine 
labor  would  disappear.  Wages  would  be  too  high  and 
opportunities  too  great  to  compel  any  man  to  stint  and 
starve  the  higher  qualities  of  his  nature,  and  in  every 
avocation  the  brain  would  aid  the  hand.  Work,  even  of 
the  coarser  kinds,  would  become  a  lightsome  thing,  and 
the  tendency  of  modern  production  to  subdivision  would 
not  involve  monotony  or  the  contraction  of  ability  in  the 
worker;  but  would  be  relieved  by  short  hours,  by  change, 
by  the  alternation  of  intellectual  with  manual  occupa- 
tions. There  would  result,  not  only  the  utilization  of 
productive  forces  now  going  to  waste;  not  only  would 
our  present  knowledge,  now  so  imperfectly  applied,  be 
fully  used;  but  from  the  mobility  of  labor  and  the  men- 
tal activity  which  would  be  generated,  there  would  result 
advances  in  the  methods  of  production  that  we  now 
cannot  imagine. 

For,  greatest  of  all  the  enormous  wastes  which  the 
present  constitution  of  society  involves,  is  that  of  mental 
power.  How  infinitesimal  are  the  forces  that  concur  to 
the  advance  of  civilization,  as  compared  to  the  forces 
that  lie  latent!    How  few  are  the  thinkers,  the  discover- 


Chap.  IV.      UPON  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  467 

ers,  the  inventors,  the  organizers,  as  compared  with  the 
great  majs  of  the  people!  Yet  such  men  are  born  in 
plenty;  it  is  the  conditions  that  permit  so  few  to 
develop.  There  are  among  men  infinite  diversities  of 
aptitude  and  inclination,  as  there  are  such  infinite  diver- 
sities in  physical  structure  that  among  a  million  there 
will  not  be  two  that  cannot  be  told  apart.  But,  both 
from  observation  and  reflection,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  differences  of  natural  power  are  no  greater  than 
the  differences  of  stature  or  of  physical  strength.  Turn 
to  the  lives  of  great  men,  and  see  how  easily  they  might 
never  have  been  heard  of.  Had  Caesar  come  of  a  prole- 
tarian family;  had  Napoleon  entered  the  world  a  few 
years  earlier;  had  Columbus  gone  into  the  Church  in- 
stead of  going  to  sea;  had  Shakespeare  been  apprenticed 
to  a  cobbler  or  chimney-sweep;  had  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
been  assigned  by  fate  the  education  and  the  toil  of  an 
agricultural  laborer;  had  Dr.  Adam  Smith  been  born  in 
the  coal  hews,  or  Herbert  Spencer  forced  to  get  his  living 
as  a  factory  operative,  what  would  their  talents  have 
availed?  But  there  would  have  been,  it  will  be  said, 
other  Caesars  or  Napoleons,  Columbuses  or  Shakespeares, 
Newtons,  Smiths  or  Spencers.  This  is  true.  And  it 
shows  how  prolific  is  our  human  nature.  As  the  com- 
mon worker  is  on  need  transformed  into  queen  bee,  so, 
when  circumstances  favor  his  development,  what  might 
otherwise  pass  for  a  common  man  rises  into  a  hero  or 
leader,  discoverer  or  teacher,  sage  or  saint.  So  widely 
has  the  sower  scattered  the  seed,  so  strong  is  the  germina- 
tive  force  that  bids  it  bud  and  blossom.  But,  alas,  for 
the  stony  ground,  and  the  birds  and  the  tares!  For  one 
who  attains  his  full  stature,  how  many  are  stunted  and 
deformed. 

The  will  within  us  is  the  ultimate  fact  of  conscious- 
ness. Yet  how  little  have  the  best  of  us,  in  acquire- 
ments, in  position,  even  in  character,  that  may  be  cred- 


468  EFFECTS  OF  THE  REMEDY.  BoolclX. 

ited  entirely  to  ourselves;  how  much  to  the  influences 
that  have  molded  us.  Who  is  there,  wise,  learned,  dis- 
creet, or  strong,  who  might  not,  were  he  to  trace  the 
inner  history  of  his  life,  turn,  like  the  Stoic  Emperor,  to 
give  thanks  to  the  gods,  that  by  this  one  and  that  one, 
and  here  and  there,  good  examples  have  been  set  him, 
noble  thoughts  have  reached  him,  and  happy  opportuni- 
ties opened  before  him.  Who  is  there,  who,  with  his 
eyes  about  him,  has  reached  the  meridian  of  life,  who  has 
not  sometimes  echoed  the  thought  of  the  pious  English- 
man, as  the  criminal  passed  to  the  gallows,  "But  for  the 
grace  of  God,  there  go  I."  How  little  does  heredity 
count  as  compared  with  conditions.  This  one,  we  say,  is 
the  result  of  a  thousand  years  of  European  progress,  and 
that  one  of  a  thousand  years  of  Chinese  petrifaction; 
yet,  placed  an  infant  in  the  heart  of  China,  and  but  for 
the  angle  of  the  eye  or  the  shade  of  the  hair,  the  Cau- 
casian would  grow  up  as  those  around  him,  using  the 
same  speech,  thinking  the  same  thoughts,  exhibiting  the 
same  tastes.  Change  Lady  Vere  de  Vere  in  her  cradle 
with  an  infant  of  the  slums,  and  will  the  blood  of  a  hun- 
dred earls  give  yon  a  refined  and  cultured  woman? 

To  remove  want  and  the  fear  of  want,  to  give  to  all 
classes  leisure,  and  comfort,  and  independence,  the  decen- 
cies and  refinements  of  life,  the  opportunities  of  mental  and 
moral  development,  would  be  like  turning  water  into  a 
desert.  The  sterile  waste  would  clothe  itself  with 
verdure,  and  the  barren  places  where  life  seemed  banned 
would  ere  long  be  dappled  with  the  shade  of  trees  and 
musical  with  the  song  of  birds.  Talents  now  hidden, 
virtues  unsuspected,  would  come  forth  to  make  human 
life  richer,  fuller,  happier,  nobler.  For  in  these  round 
men  who  are  stuck  into  three-cornered  holes,  and  three- 
cornered  men  who  are  jammed  into  round  holes;  in  these 
men  who  are  wasting  their  energies  in  the  scramble  to 
be  rich;  in  these  who  in  factories  are  turned  into  ma- 


Chap.  IV.      UPOSr  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE.  469 

chines,  or  are  chained  by  necessity  to  bench  or  plow;  in 
these  children  who  are  growing  up  in  squalor,  and  vice, 
and  ignorance,  are  powers  of  the  highest  order,  talents 
the  most  splendid.  They  need  but  the  opportunity  to 
bring  them  forth. 

Consider  the  possibilities  of  a  state  of  society  that  gave 
that  opportunity  to  all.  Let  imagination  fill  out  the 
picture;  its  colors  grow  too  bright  for  words  to  paint. 
Consider  the  moral  elevation,  the  intellectual  activity, 
the  social  life.  Consider  how  by  a  thousand  actions  and 
interactions  the  members  of  every  community  are  linked 
together,  and  how  in  the  present  condition  of  things 
even  the  fortunate  few  who  stand  upon  the  apex  of  the 
social  pyramid  must  suffer,  though  they  know  it  not, 
from  the  want,  ignorance,  and  degradation  that  are 
underneath.  Consider  these  things  and  then  say  whether 
the  change  I  propose  would  not  be  for  the  benefit  of 
every  one — even  the  greatest  land  holder?  Would  he  not 
be  safer  of  the  future  of  his  children  in  leaving  them 
penniless  in  such  a  state  of  society  than  in  leaving  them 
the  largest  fortune  in  this?  Did  such  a  state  of  society 
anywhere  exist,  would  he  not  buy  entrance  to  it  cheaply 
by  giving  up  all  his  possessions? 

I  have  now  traced  to  their  source  social  weakness  and 
disease.  I  have  shown  the  remedy.  I  have  covered 
every  point  and  met  every  objection.  But  the  problems 
that  we  have  been  considering,  great  as  they  are,  pass 
into  problems  greater  yet — into  the  grandest  problems 
with  which  the  human  mind  can  grapple.  I  am  about 
to  ask  the  reader  who  has  gone  with  me  so  far,  to  go 
with  me  further,  into  still  higher  fields.  But  I  ask  him 
to  remember  that  in  the  little  space  which  remains  of 
the  limits  to  which  this  book  must  be  confined,  I  cannot 
fully  treat  the  questions  which  arise.  I  can  but  suggest 
some  thoughts,  which  may,  perhaps,  serve  as  hints  for 
farther  thought. 


BOOK  X. 

THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGKESS. 


CHAPTER  I. — ^THE  CURRENT  THEORY  OF  HUMAN"  PRO- 
GRESS— ITS   INSUFFICIENCY. 

CHAPTER  II. — DIFFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION — ^TO  WHAT 
DUE. 

CHAPTER  III. — THE  LAW   OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS. 

CHAPTER    IV. — HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION  MAY  DECLINE. 

CHAPTER     V. — ^THE  CENTRAL  TRUTH. 


What  in  me  is  dark 
Illumine,  what  is  low  raise  and  support; 
That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence 
And  Justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men. 

—Maton. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THB  CUBBBNT  THEOBY  OF  HUMAN  PBOQBESS— ITS  IIT- 
SDFFICIENCY. 

If  the  conclusions  at  which  we  have  arrived  are  cor- 
rect, they  will  fall  under  a  larger  generalization. 

Let  us,  therefore,  recommence  our  inquiry  from  a 
higher  standpoint,  whence  we  may  survey  a  wider  field. 


What  is  the  law  of  human  progress  f 


This  is  a  question  which,  were  it  not  for  what  has 
gone  hefore,  I  should  hesitate  to  review  in  the  brief 
space  I  can  now  devote  to  it,  as  it  involves,  directly  or 
indirectly,  some  of  the  very  highest  problems  with  which 
the  human  mind  can  engage.  But  it  is  a  question  which 
naturally  comes  up.  Are  or  are  not  the  conclusions  to 
which  we  have  come  consistent  with  the  great  law  under 
which  human  development  goes  on? 

What  is  that  law?  We  must  find  the  answer  to  our 
question;  for  the  current  philosophy,  though  it  clearly 
recognizes  the  existence  of  such  a  law,  gives  no  more  sat- 
isfactory account  of  it  than  the  current  political  economy 
does  of  the  persistence  of  want  amid  advancing  wealth. 

Let  us,  as  far  as  possible,,  keep  to  the  firm  ground  of 
facts.  Whether  man  was  or  was  not  gradually  developed 
from  an  animal,  it  is  not  necessary  to  ill  quire.  However 
intimate  may  be  the  connection  between  questions  which 
relate  to  man  as  we  know  him  and  questions  which  relate 
to  his  genesis,  it  is  only  from  the  former  upon  the  latter 
that  light  can  be  thrown.  Inference  cannot  proceed 
from  the  unknown  to  the  known.     It  is  only  from  facts 


474  THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN  PROaBESS.  Book  X. 

of  which  we  are  cognizant  that  we  can  infer  what  has 
preceded  cognizance. 

However  man  may  have  originated,  all  we  know  of 
him  is  as  man — just  as  he  is  now  to  be  found.  There  is 
no  record  or  trace  of  him  in  any  lower  condition  than 
that  in  which  savages  are  still  to  be  met.  By  whatever 
bridge  he  may  have  crossed  the  wide  chasm  which  now 
separates  him  from  the  brutes,  there  remain  of  it  no 
vestiges.  Between  the  lowest  savages  of  whom  we  know 
and  the  highest  animals,  there  is  an  irreconcilable  differ- 
ence— a  difference  not  merely  of  degree,  but  of  kind. 
Many  of  the  characteristics,  actions,  and  emotions  of 
man  are  exhibited  by  the  lower  animals;  but  man,  no 
matter  how  low  in  the  scale  of  humanity,  has  never  yet 
been  found  destitute  of  one  thing  of  which  no  animal 
shows  the  slightest  trace,  a  clearly  recognizable  but  al- 
most undefinable  something,  which  gives  him  the  power 
of  improvement — which  makes  him  the  progressive 
animal. 

The  beaver  builds  a  dam,  and  the  bird  a  nest,  and  the 
bee  a  cell;  but  while  beavers'  dams,  and  birds'  nests, 
and  bees'  cells  are  always  constructed  on  the  same  model, 
the  house  of  the  man  passes  from  the  rude  hut  of  leaves 
and  branches  to  the  magnificent  mansion  replete  with 
modern  conveniences.  The  dog  can  to  a  certain  extent 
connect  cause  and  effect,  and  may  be  taught  some  tricks; 
but  his  capacity  in  these  respects  has  not  been  a  whit 
increased  during  all  the  ages  he  has  been  the  associate  of 
improving  man,  and  the  dog  of  civilization  is  not  a  whit 
more  accomplished  or  intelligent  than  the  dog  of  the 
wandering  savage.  We  know  of  no  animal  that  uses 
clothes,  that  cooks  its  food,  that  makes  itself  tools  or 
weapons,  that  breeds  other  animals  that  it  wishes  to  eat, 
or  that  has  an  articulate  language.  But  men  who  do 
not  do  such  things  have  never  yet  been  found,  or  heard 
of,  except  in  fable.     That  is  to  say,  man,  wherever  we 


'Chap.  I.     INSUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  CUEBEKT  THEORY.        476 

know  him,  exhibits  this  power — of  supplementing  what 
nature  has  done  for  him  by  what  he  does  for  himself; 
and,  in  fact,  so  inferior  is  the  physical  endowment  of 
man,  that  there  is  no  part  of  the  world,  save  perhaps 
some  of  the  small  islands  of  the  Pacific,  where  without 
this  faculty  he  could  maintain  an  existence. 

Man  everywhere  and  at  all  times  exhibits  this  faculty 
— everywhere  and  at  all  times  of  which  we  have  knowl- 
edge he  has  made  some  use  of  it.  But  the  degree 
in  which  this  has  been  done  greatly  varies.  Between 
the  rude  canoe  and  the  steamship;  between  the  boom- 
erang and  the  repeating  rifle;  between  the  roughly  carved 
wooden  idol  and  the  breathing  marble  of  Grecian  art; 
between  savage  knowledge  and  modern  science;  be- 
tween the  wild  Indian  and  the  white  settler;  between 
the  Hottentot  woman  and  the  belle  of  polished  society, 
there  is  an  enormous  difference. 

The  varying  degrees  in  which  this  faculty  is  used  can- 
not be  ascribed  to  differences  in  original  capacity — the 
most  highly  improved  peoples  of  the  present  day  were 
savages  within  historic  times,  and  we  meet  with  the 
widest  differences  between  peoples  of  the  same  stock. 
Nor  can  they  be  wholly  ascribed  to  differences  in  phys- 
ical environment — the  cradles  of  learning  and  the  arts  are 
now  in  many  cases  tenanted  by  barbarians,  and  within  a 
few  years  great  cities  rise  on  the  hunting  grounds  of  wild 
tribes.  All  these  differences  are  evidently  connected  with 
social  development.  Beyond  perhaps  the  veriest  rudi- 
ments, it  becomes  possible  for  man  to  improve  only  as 
he  lives  with  his  fellows.  All  these  improvements, 
therefore,  in  man's  powers  and  condition  we  summarize 
in  the  term  civilization.  Men  improve  as  they  become 
civilized,  or  learn  to  co-operate  in  society. 

What  is  the  law  of  this  improvement?  By  what  com- 
mon principle  can  we  explain  the  different  stages  of  civili- 
zation at  which  different  communities  have  arrived?    In 


476  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Booh  X. 

what  consists  essentially  the  progress  of  civilization,  so 
that  we  may  say  of  varying  social  adjustments,  this  favors 
it,  and  that  does  not;  or  explain  why  an  institution  or 
condition  which  may  at  one  time  advance  it  may  at  an- 
other time  retard  it? 

The  prevailing  belief  now  is,  that  the  progress  of  civi- 
lization is  a  development  or  evolution,  in  the  course  of 
which  men's  powers  are  increased  and  his  qualities  im- 
proved by  the  operation  of  causes  similar  to  those  which 
are  relied  upon  as  explaining  the  genesis  of  species — viz., 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  and  the  hereditary  transmission 
of  acquired  qualities. 

That  civilization  is  an  evolution — that  it  is,  in  the 
language  of  Herbert  Spencer,  a  progress  from  an  in- 
definite, incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent 
heterogeneity — there  is  no  doubt;  but  to  say  this  is  not 
to  explain  or  identify  the  causes  which  forward  or  retard 
it.  How  far  the  sweeping  generalizations  of  Spencer, 
which  seek  to  account  for  all  phenomena  under  terms  of 
matter  and  force,  may,  properly  understood,  include  all 
these  causes,  I  am  unable  to  say;  but,  as  scientifically 
expounded,  the  development  philosophy  has  either  not 
yet  definitely  met  this  question,  or  has  given  birth,  or 
rather  coherency,  to  an  opinion  which  does  not  accord 
with  the  facts. 

/    The  vulgar  explanation  of  progress  is,  I  think,  very 
/much  like  the  view  naturally  taken  by  the  money  maker 
/  of  the  causes  of  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth.     His 
/  theory,  if  he  has  one,  usually  is,  that  there  is  plenty  of 
I  money  to  be  made  by  those  who  have  will  and  ability, 
*  and  that  it  is  ignorance,  or  idleness,  or  extravagance, 
that  makes  the  difference  between  the  rich  and  the  poor. 
And  so  the  common  explanation  of  differences  of  civiliza- 
tion is  of  differences  in  capacity.     The  civilized  races  are 
the  superior  races,  and  advance  in  civilization  is  accord- 
ing to  this  superiority — just  as  English  victories  were,  in 


Chop./.     INSUFPICIBNCT  OP  THE  CUEEBBTT  THEOBY.        477 

common  English  opinion,  due  to  the  natural  superiority 
of  Englishmen  to  frog-eating  Frenchmen;  and  popular 
government,  active  invention,  and  greater  average  com- 
fort are,  or  were  until  lately,  in  common  American  opin- 
ion, due  to  the  greater  ^'smartness  of  the  Yankee 
Nation." 

Now,  just  as  the  politico-economic  doctrines  which  in 
the  beginning  of  this  inquiry  we  met  and  disproved, 
harmonize  with  the  common  opinion  of  men  who  see 
capitalists  paying  wages  and  competition  reducing  wages; 
just  as  the  Malthusian  theory  harmonized  with  existing 
prejudices  both  of  the  rich  and  the  poor;  so  does  the  ex- 
planation of  progress  as  a  gradual  race  improvement 
harmonize  with  the  vulgar  opinion  which  accounts  by 
race  differences  for  differences  in  civilization.  It  has 
given  coherence  and  a  scientific  formula  to  opinions 
which  already  prevailed.  Its  wonderful  spread  since  the 
time  Darwin  first  startled  the  world  with  his  "Origin  of 
Species"  has  not  been  so  much  a  conquest  as  an  assimila- 
tion. 

The  view  which  now  dominates  the  world  of  thought 
is  this:  That  the  struggle  for  existence,  just  in  propor- 
tion as  it  becomes  intense,  impels  men  to  new  efforts  and 
inventions.  That  this  improvement  and  capacity  for 
improvement  is  fixed  by  hereditary  transmission,  and 
extended  by  the  tendency  of  the  best  adapted  individual, 
or  most  improved  individual,  to  survive  and  propagate 
among  individuals,  and  of  the  best  adapted,  or  most  im- 
proved tribe,  nation,  or  race  to  survive  in  the  struggle 
between  social  aggregates.  On  this  theory  the  differ- 
ences between  man  and  the  animals,  and  differences  in 
the  relative  progress  of  men,  are  now  explained  as  confi- 
dently, and  all  but  as  generally,  as  a  little  while  ago  they 
were  explained  upon  the  theory  of  special  creation  and 
divine  interposition. 

The  practical  outcome  of  this  theory  is  in  a  sort  of 


478  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN"  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

hopeful  fatalism,  of  which  current  literature  is  full.*  In 
this  view,  progress  is  the  result  of  forces  which  work 
slowly,  steadily  and  remorselessly,  for  the  elevation  of  man. 
"War,  slavery,  tyranny,  superstition,  famine,  and  pesti- 
lence, the  want  and  misery  which  fester  in  modern  civili- 
zation, are  the  impelling  causes  which  drive  man  on,  by 
eliminating  poorer  types  and  extending  the  higher;  and 
hereditary  transmission  is  the  power  by  which  advances 
are  fixed,  and  past  advances  made  the  footing  for  new 
advances.  The  individual  is  the  result  of  changes  thus 
impressed  upon  and  perpetuated  through  a  long  series  of 
past  individuals,  and  the  social  organization  takes  its 
form  from  the  individuals  of  which  it  is  composed. 
Thus,  while  this  theory  is,  as  Herbert  Spencer  saysf— 
"radical  to  a  degree  beyond  anything  which  current 
radicalism  conceives;'*  inasmuch  as  it  looks  for  changes 
in  the  very  nature  of  man;  it  is  at  the  same  time  "con- 
servative to  a  degree  beyond  anything  conceived  by  cur- 
rent conservatism,"  inasmuch  as  it  holds  that  no  change 
can  avail  save  these  slow  changes  in  men's  natures. 
Philosophers  may  teach  that  this  does  not  lessen  the 
duty  of  endeavoring  to  reform  abuses,  just  as  the  theo- 
logians who  taught  predestinarianism  insisted  on  the 

*  In  semi-scientific  or  popularized  form  this  may  perhaps  be  seen 
In  best,  because  frankest,  expression  in  "The  Martyrdom  of  Man," 
by  Winwood  Reade,  a  writer  of  singular  vividness  and  power.  This 
book  is  in  reality  a  history  of  progress,  or,  rather,  a  monograph  upon 
its  causes  and  methods,  and  will  well  repay  perusal  for  its  vivid  pic- 
tures, whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  capacity  of  the  author  for 
philosophic  generalization.  The  connection  between  subject  and 
title  may  be  seen  by  the  conclusion:  "I  give  to  universal  history  a 
strange  but  true  title — The  Martyrdom  of  Man.  In  each  generation 
the  human  race  has  been  tortured  that  their  children  might  profit  by 
their  woes.  Our  own  prosperity  is  founded  on  the  agonies  of  the 
past.  Is  it  therefore  imjust  that  we  also  should  stiff er  for  the  benefit 
of  those  who  are  to  come?" 

f  "The  Study  of  Sociology  "—Conclusion. 


Chap.l.      INSUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  CURRENT  THEORY.         479 

duty  of  all  to  struggle  for  salvation;  but,  as  generally 
apprehended,  the  result  is  fatalism — "do  what  we  may, 
the  mills  of  the  gods  grind  on  regardless  either  of  our 
aid  or  our  hindrance."  I  allude  to  this  only  to  illustrate 
what  I  take  to  be  the  opinion  now  rapidly  spreading  and 
permeating  common  thought;  not  that  in  the  search  for 
truth  any  regard  for  its  effects  should  be  permitted  to 
bias  the  mind.  But  this  I  take  to  be  the  current  view  of 
civilization:  That  it  is  the  result  of  forces,  operating  in 
the  way  indicated,  which  slowly  change  the  character, 
and  improve  and  elevate  the  powers  of  man;  that  the 
difference  between  civilized  man  and  savage  is  of  a  long 
race  education,  which  has  become  permanently  fixed  in 
mental  organization;  and  that  this  improvement  tends  to 
go  on  increasingly,  to  a  higher  and  higher  civilization. 
We  have  reached  such  a  point  that  progress  seems  to 
be  natural  with  us,  and  we  look  forward  confidently  to 
the  greater  achievements  of  the  coming  race — some  even 
holding  that  the  progress  of  science  will  finally  give  mea 
immortality  and  enable  them  to  make  bodily  the  tour  not 
only  of  the  planets,  but  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  at  length 
to  manufacture  suns  and  systems  for  themselves.* 

But  without  soaring  to  the  stars,  the  moment  that 
this  theory  of  progression,  wliich  seems  so  natural  to  us 
amid  an  advancing  civilization,  looks  around  the  world, 
it  comes  against  an  enormous  fact  —the  fixed,  petrified 
civilizations.  The  majority  of  the  human  race  to-day 
have  no  idea  of  progress;  the  majority  of  the  human  race 
to-day  look  (as  until  a  few  generations  ago  our  own  an- 
cestors looked)  upon  the  past  as  the  time  of  human  per- 
fection. The  difference  between  the  savage  and  the 
civilized  man  may  be  explained  on  the  theory  that  the 
former  is  as  yet  so  imperfectly  developed  that  his  prog- 
ress is  hardly  apparent;  but  how,  upon  the  theory  that 
human  progress  is  the  result  of  general  and  continuous 

•  Winwood  Heade,  "  The  Martyrdom  of  Man.'* 


480  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN"  PE0GRES8.  Booh  X. 

causes,  shall  we  account  for  the  civilizations  that  have 
progressed  so  far  and  then  stopped?  It  cannot  be  said 
of  the  Hindoo  and  of  the  Chinaman,  as  it  may  be  said  of 
the  savage,  that  our  superiority  is  the  result  of  a  longer 
education;  that  we  are,  as  it  were,  the  grown  men  of 
nature,  while  they  are  the  children.  The  Hindoos  and 
the  Chinese  were  civilized  when  we  were  savages.  They 
had  greiat  cities,  highly  organized  and  powerful  govern- 
ments, literatures,  philosophies,  polished  manners,  con- 
siderable division  of  labor,  large  commerce,  and  elaborate 
arts,  when  our  ancestors  were  wandering  barbarians,  liv- 
ing in  huts  and  skin  tents,  not  a  whit  further  advanced 
than  the  American  Indians.  While  we  have  progressed 
from  this  savage  state  to  Nineteenth  Century  civiliza- 
tion, they  have  stood  still.  If  progress  be  the  result  of 
fixed  laws,  inevitable  and  eternal,  which  impel  men  for- 
ward, how  shall  we  account  for  this? 

One  of  the  best  popular  expounders  of  the  develop- 
ment philosophy,  Walter  Bagehot  ("Physics  and  Poli- 
tics"), admits  the  force  of  this  objection,  and  endeavors 
in  this  way  to  explain  it:  That  the  first  thing  necessary 
to  civilize  man  is  to  tame  him;  to  induce  him  to  live  in 
association  with  his  fellows  in  subordination  to  law;  and 
hence  a  body  or  "cake"  of  laws  and  customs  grows  up, 
being  intensified  and  extended  by  natural  selection,  the 
tribe  or  nation  thus  bound  together  having  an  advantage 
over  those  who  are  not.  That  this  cake  of  custom  and 
law  finally  becomes  too  thick  and  hard  to  permit  further 
progress,  which  can  go  on  only  as  circumstances  occur 
which  introduce  discussion,  and  thus  permit  the  freedom 
and  mobility  necessary  to  improvement. 

This  explanation,  which  Mr.  Bagehot  offers,  as  he  says, 
with  some  misgivings,  is  I  think  at  the  expense  of  the 
general  theory.  But  it  is  not  worth  while  speaking  of 
that,  for  it,  manifestly,  does  not  explain  the  facts. 

The  hardening  tendency  of  which  Mr.  Bagehot  speaks 


Chap.  I.     IKSUFFICIENCT  OF  THE  CURRBKT  THEORY.        481 

would  show  itself  at  a  very  early  period  of  development, 
and  his  illnstrations  of  it  are  nearly  all  drawn  from 
savage  or  semi-savage  life.  Whereas,  these  arrested  civi- 
lizations had  gone  a  long  distance  before  they  stopped. 
There  must  have  been  a  time  when  they  were  very 
far  advanced  as  compared  with  the  savage  state,  and 
were  yet  plastic,  free,  and  advancing.  These  arrested 
civilizations  stopped  at  a  point  which  was  hardly  in  any- 
thing inferior  and  in  many  respects  superior  to  European 
civilization  of,  say,  the  sixteenth  or  at  any  rate  the  fif- 
teenth century.  Up  to  that  point  then  there  must  have 
been  discussion,  the  hailing  of  what  was  new,  and  men- 
tal activity  of  all  sorts.  They  had  architects  who  carried 
the  art  of  building,  necessarily  by  a  series  of  innovations 
or  improvements,  up  to  a  very  high  point;  ship-builders 
who  in  the  same  way,  by  innovation  after  innovation, 
finally  produced  as  good  a  vessel  as  the  war  ships  of 
Henry  VIII. ;  inventors  who  stopped  only  on  the  verge  of 
our  most  important  improvements,  and  from  some  of 
whom  we  can  yet  learn;  engineers  who  constructed  great 
irrigation  works  and  navigable  canals;  rival  schools  of 
philosophy  and  conflicting  ideas  of  religion.  One  great 
religion,  in  many  respects  resembling  Christianity,  rose 
in  India,  displaced  the  old  religion,  passed  into  China, 
sweeping  over  that  country,  and  was  displaced  again  in 
its  old  seats,  just  as  Christianity  was  displaced  in  its  first 
seats.  There  was  life,  and  active  life,  and  the  innova- 
tion that  begets  improvement,  long  after  men  had 
learned  to  live  together.  And,  moreover,  both  India 
and  China  have  received  the  infusion  of  new  life  in  con- 
quering races,  with  different  customs  and  modes  of 
thought. 

The  most  fixed  and  petrified  of  all  civilizations  of  which 
we  know  anything  was  that  of  Egypt,  where  even  art 
finally  assumed  a  conventional  and  inflexible  form.  But 
we  know  that  behind  this  must  have  been  a  time  of  life 


482  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PE0GRES8.  Book  X. 

and  vigor — a  freshly  developing  and  expanding  civiliza- 
tion, such  as  ours  is  now — or  the  arts  and  sciences  could 
never  have  been  carried  to  such  a  pitch.  And  recent 
excavations  have  brought  to  light  from  beneath  what  we 
before  knew  of  Egypt  an  earlier  Egypt  still— in  statues 
and  carvings  which,  instead  of  a  hard  and  formal  type, 
beam  with  life  and  expression,  which  show  art  strug- 
gling, ardent,  natural,  and  free,  the  sure  indication  of 
an  active  and  expanding  life.  So  it  must  have  been  once 
with  all  now  unprogressive  civilizations. 

But  it  is  not  merely  these  arrested  civilizations  that 
the  current  theory  of  development  fails  to  account  for. 
It  is  not  merely  that  men  have  gone  so  far  on  the  path 
of  progress  and  then  stopped;  it  is  that  men  have  gone 
far  on  the  path  of  progress  and  then  gone  back.  It  is 
not  merely  an  isolated  case  that  thus  confronts  the  theory 
— it  is  the  universal  rule.  Every  civilization  that  the 
world  has  yet  seen  has  had  its  period  of  vigorous  growth, 
of  arrest  and  stagnation;  its  decline  and  fall.  Of  all  the 
civilizations  that  have  arisen  and  flourished,  there  re- 
main to-day  but  those  that  have  been  arrested,  and  our 
own,  which  is  not  yet  as  old  as  were  the  pyramids  when 
Abraham  looked  upon  them — while  behind  the  pyramids 
were  twenty  centuries  of  recorded  history. 

That  our  own  civilization  has  a  broader  base,  is  of  a 
more  advanced  type,  moves  quicker  and  soars  higher 
than  any  preceding  civilization  is  undoubtedly  true;  but 
in  these  respects  it  is  hardly  more  in  advance  of  the 
Greco-Roman  civilization  than  that  was  in  advance  of 
Asiatic  civilization;  and  if  it  were,  that  would  prove 
nothing  as  to  its  permanence  and  future  advance,  unless 
it  be  shown  that  it  is  superior  in  those  things  which 
caused  the  ultimate  failure  of  its  predecessors.  The 
current  theory  does  not  assume  this. 

In  truth,  nothing  could  be  further  from  explaining  the 
facts  of  universal  history  than  this  theory  that  civiliza- 


Chap.  I.     INSUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  CtJERENT  THEOEY.        483 

tion  is  the  result  of  a  course  of  natural  selection  which 
operates  to  improve  and  elevate  the  powers  of  man. 
That  civilization  has  arisen  at  different  times  in  different 
places  and  has  progressed  at  different  rates,  is  not  incon- 
sistent with  this  theory;  for  that  might  result  from  the 
unequal  balancing  of  impelling  and  resisting  forces;  but 
that  progress  everywhere  commencing,  for  even  among 
the  lowest  tribes  it  is  held  that  there  has  been  some 
progress,  has  nowhere  been  continuous,  but  has  every- 
where been  brought  to  a  stand  or  retrogression,  is  abso- 
lutely inconsistent.  For  if  progress  operated  to  fix  an 
improvement  in  man's  nature  and  thus  to  produce  further 
progress,  though  there  might  be  occasional  interruption, 
yet  the  general  rule  wonld  be  that  progress  would  be 
continuous — that  advance  would  lead  to  advance,  and 
civilization  develop  into  higher  civilization. 

Not  merely  the  general  rule,  but  the  universal  rule,  is 
the  reverse  of  this.  The  earth  is  the  tomb  of  the  dead 
empires,  no  less  than  of  dead  men.  Instead  of  progress 
fitting  men  for  greater  progress,  every  civilization  that 
was  in  its  own  time  as  vigorous  and  advancing  as  ours  is 
now,  has  of  itself  come  to  a  stop.  Over  and  over  again, 
art  has  declined,  learning  sunk,  power  waned,  popula- 
tion become  sparse,  until  the  people  who  had  built  great 
temples  and  mighty  cities,  turned  rivers  and  pierced 
mountains,  cultivated  the  earth  like  a  garden  and  intro- 
duced the  utmost  refinement  into  the  minute  affairs  of 
life,  remained  but  in  a  remnant  of  squalid  barbarians, 
who  had  lost  even  the  memory  of  what  their  ancestors 
had  done,  and  regarded  the  surviving  fragments  of  their 
grandeur  as  the  work  of  genii,  or  of  the  mighty  race  be- 
fore the  flood.  So  true  is  this,  that  when  we  think  of 
the  past,  it  seems  like  the  inexorable  law,  from  which  we 
can  no  more  hope  to  be  exempt  than  the  young  man 
who  "feels  his  life  in  every  limb"  can  hope  to  be  exempt 
from  the  dissolution  which  is  the  common  fate  of  alL 


484  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PBOGBESS.  BoOe  X. 

"Even  this,  O  Bome,  must  one  day  be  thy  fate!"  wept 
Scipio  over  the  ruins  of  Carthage,  and  Macaulay's  pic- 
ture of  the  New  Zealander  musing  upon  the  broken  arch 
of  London  Bridge  appeals  to  the  imagination  of  even 
those  who  see  cities  rising  in  the  wilderness  and  help  to 
lay  the  foundations  of  new  empire.  And  so,  when  we 
erect  a  public  building  we  make  a  hollow  in  the  largest 
corner  stone  and  carefully  seal  within  it  some  mementos 
of  our  day,  looking  forward  to  the  time  when  our  works 
shall  be  ruins  and  ourselves  forgot. 

Nor  whether  this  alternate  rise  and  fall  of  civilization, 
this  retrogression  that  always  follows  progression,  be,  or 
be  not,  the  rhythmic  movement  of  an  ascending  line 
(and  I  think,  though  I  will  not  open  the  question,  that 
it  would  be  much  more  difficult  to  prove  the  affirmative 
than  is  generally  supposed)  makes  no  difference;  for  the 
current  theory  is  in  either  case  disproved.  Civilizations 
have  died  and  made  no  sign,  and  hard-won  progress  has 
been  lost  to  the  race  forever,  but,  even  if  it  be  admitted 
that  each  wave  of  progress  has  made  possible  a  higher 
wave  and  each  civilization  passed  the  torch  to  a  greater 
civilization,  the  theory  that  civilization  advances  by 
changes  wrought  in  the  nature  of  man  fails  to  explain 
the  facts;  for  in  every  case  it  is  not  the  race  that  has 
been  educated  and  hereditarily  modified  by  the  old  civili- 
zation that  begins  the  new,  but  a  fresh  race  coming  from 
a  lower  level.  It  is  the  barbarians  of  the  one  epoch  who 
have  been  the  civilized  men  of  the  next;  to  be  in  their 
turn  succeeded  by  fresh  barbarians.  For  it  has  been 
heretofore  always  the  case  that  men  under  the  influences 
of  civilization,  though  at  first  improving,  afterward 
degenerate.  The  civilized  man  of  to-day  is  vastly  the 
superior  of  the  uncivilized;  but  so  in  the  time  of  its 
vigor  was  the  civilized  man  of  every  dead  civilization. 
But  there  are  such  things  as  the  vices,  the  corruptions, 
the  enervations  of  civilization,  which  past  a  certain  point 


Chap.  I.     INSUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  CUERENT  THEORY.        485 

have  always  heretofore  shown  themselves.  Every  civili- 
zation that  has  been  overwhelmed  by  barbarians  has  really 
perished  from  internal  decay. 

This  universal  fact,  the  moment  that  it  is  recognized, 
disposes  of  the  theory  that  progress  is  by  hereditary  trans- 
mission. Looking  over  the  history  of  the  world,  the 
line  of  greatest  advance  does  not  coincide  for  any  length 
of  time  with  any  line  of  heredity.  On  any  particular 
line  of  heredity,  retrogression  seems  always  to  follow 
advance. 

Shall  we  therefore  say  that  there  is  a  national  or  race 
life,  as  there  is  an  individual  life — that  every  social 
aggregate  has,  as  it  were,  a  certain  amount  of  energy, 
the  expenditure  of  which  necessitates  decay?  This  is  an 
old  and  widespread  idea,  that  is  yet  largely  held,  and 
that  may  be  constantly  seen  cropping  out  incongruously 
in  the  writings  of  the  expounders  of  the  development 
philosophy.  Indeed,  I  do  not  see  why  it  may  not  be 
stated  in  terms  of  matter  and  of  motion  so  as  to  bring  it 
clearly  within  the  generalizations  of  evolution.  For  con- 
sidering its  individuals  as  atoms,  the  growth  of  society  is 
"an  integration  of  matter  and  concomitant  dissipation  of 
motion;  during  which  the  matter  passes  from  an  in- 
definite, incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent 
heterogeneity,  and  during  which  the  retained  motion 
undergoes  a  parallel  transformation."*  And  thus  an 
analogy  may  be  drawn  between  the  life  of  a  society  and 
the  life  of  a  solar  system  upon  the  nebular  hypothesis. 
As  the  heat  and  light  of  the  sun  are  produced  by  the 
aggregation  of  atoms  evolving  motion,  which  finally 
ceases  when  the  atoms  at  length  come  to  a  state  of 
equilibrium  or  rest,  and  a  state  of  immobility  succeeds, 
which  can  be  broken  in  again  only  by  the  impact  of  ex- 

*  Herbert  Spencer's  definition  of  Evolution,  "First  Principles,"  p. 
896. 


486  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PKOGKESS.  BoOc  Z. 

ternal  forces,  which  reverse  the  process  of  evolution, 
integrating  motion  and  dissipating  matter  in  the  form  of 
gas,  again  to  evolve  motion  by  its  condensation;  so,  it 
may  be  said,  does  the  aggregation  of  individuals  in  a 
community  evolve  a  force  which  produces  the  light  and 
warmth  of  civilization,  but  when  this  process  ceases  and 
the  individual  components  are  brought  into  a  state  of 
equilibrium,  assuming  their  fixed  places,  petrifaction 
ensues,  and  the  breaking  up  and  diffusion  caused  by  an 
incursion  of  barbarians  is  necessary  to  the  recommence- 
ment of  the  process  and  a  new  growth  of  civilization. 

But  analogies  are  the  most  dangerous  modes  of 
thought.  They  may  connect  resemblances  and  yet  dis- 
guise or  cover  up  the  truth.  And  all  such  analogies  are 
superficial.  While  its  members  are  constantly  repro- 
duced in  all  the  fresh  vigor  of  childhood,  a  community 
cannot  grow  old,  as  does  a  man,  by  the  decay  of  its 
powers.  While  its  aggregate  force  must  be  the  sum  of 
the  forces  of  its  individual  components,  a  community 
cannot  lose  vital  power  unless  the  vital  powers  of  its 
components  are  lessened. 

Yet  in  both  the  common  analogy  which  likens  the  life 
power  of  a  nation  to  that  of  an  individual,  and  in  the 
one  I  have  supposed,  lurks  the  recognition  of  an  obvious 
truth — the  truth  that  the  obstacles  which  finally  bring 
progress  to  a  halt  are  raised  by  the  course  of  progress; 
that  what  has  destroyed  all  previous  civilizations  has 
been  the  conditions  produced  by  the  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion itself. 

This  is  a  truth  which  in  the  current  philosophy  is 
ignored;  but  it  is  a  truth  most  pregnant.  Any  valid 
theory  of  human  progress  must  account  for  it. 


CHAPTER   11. 

DIPFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION — TO  WHAT  DUB. 

In  attempting  to  discover  the  law  of  human  progress, 
the  first  step  must  be  to  determine  the  essential  nature 
of  those  differences  which  we  describe  as  differences  in 
civilization. 

That  the  current  philosophy,  which  attributes  social 
progress  to  changes  wrought  in  the  nature  of  man,  does 
not  accord  with  historical  facts,  we  have  already  seen. 
And  we  may  also  see,  if  we  consider  them,  that  the 
differences  between  communities  in  different  stages  of 
civilization  cannot  be  ascribed  to  innate  differences  in 
the  individuals  who  compose  these  communities.  That 
there  are  natural  differences  is  true,  and  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  hereditary  transmission  of  peculiarities  is 
undoubtedly  true;  but  the  great  differences  between 
men  in  different  states  of  society  cannot  be  explained  in 
this  way.  The  influence  of  heredity,  which  it  is  now 
the  fashion  to  rate  so  highly,  is  as  nothing  compared 
with  the  influences  which  mold  the  man  after  he  comes 
into  the  world.  What  is  more  ingrained  in  habit  than 
language,  which  becomes  not  merely  an  automatic  trick 
of  the  muscles,  but  the  medium  of  thought?  What  per- 
sists longer,  or  will  quicker  show  nationality?  Yet  we 
are  not  born  with  a  predisposition  to  any  language.  Our 
mother  tongue  is  our  mother  tongue  only  because  we 
learned  it  in  infancy.  Although  his  ancestors  have 
thought  and  spoken  in  one  language  for  countless  gen- 
erations, a  child  who  hears  from  the  first  nothing  else, 
will  learn  with  equal  facility  any  other  tongue.     And  so 


488  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PE0GEE3S.  Book  X. 

of  other  national  or  local  or  class  peculiarities.  They 
seem  to  be  matters  of  education  and  habit,  not  of  trans- 
mission. Cases  of  white  children  captured  by  Indians 
in  infancy  and  brought  up  in  the  wigwam  show  this. 
They  become  thorough  Indians.  And  so,  I  believe,  with 
children  brought  up  by  Gypsies. 

That  this  is  not  so  true  of  the  children  of  Indians  or 
other  distinctly  marked  races  brought  up  by  whites  is,  I 
think,  due  to  the  fact  that  they  are  never  treated  pre- 
cisely as  white  children.  A  gentleman  who  had  taught 
a  colored  school  once  told  me  that  he  thought  the  colored 
children,  up  to  the  age  of  ten  or  twelve,  were  really 
brighter  and  learned  more  readily  than  white  children, 
but  that  after  that  age  they  seemed  to  get  dull  and  care- 
less. He  thought  this  proof  of  innate  race  inferiority, 
and  so  did  I  at  the  time.  But  I  afterward  heard  a 
highly  intelligent  negro  gentleman  (Bishop  Hillery)  in- 
cidentally make  a  remark  which  to  my  mind  seems  a 
sufficient  explanation.  He  said:  **Our  children,  when 
they  are  young,  are  fully  as  bright  as  white  children,  and 
learn  as  readily.  But  as  soon  as  they  get  old  enough  to 
appreciate  their  status — to  realize  that  they  are  looked 
upon  as  belonging  to  an  inferior  race,  and  can  never 
hope  to  be  anything  more  than  cooks,  waiters,  or  some- 
thing of  that  sort,  they  lose  their  ambition  and  cease  to 
keep  up.*'  And  to  this  he  might  have  added,  that  be- 
ing the  children  of  poor,  uncultivated  and  unambitious 
parents,  home  influences  told  against  them.  For,  I  be- 
lieve it  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  in  the 
primary  part  of  education  the  children  of  ignorant 
parents  are  quite  as  receptive  as  the  children  of  intelli- 
gent parents,  but  by  and  by  the  latter,  as  a  general  rule, 
pull  ahead  and  make  the  most  intelligent  men  and 
women.  The  reason  is  plain.  As  to  the  first  simple 
things  which  they  learn  only  at  school,  they  are  on  a  par, 
but  as  their  studies  become  more  complex,  the  child  who 


Chap.n.  DIFFERElifCES  IS  CIVILIZATION".  489 

at  home  is  accustomed  to  good  English,  hears  intelligent 
conversation,  has  access  to  books,  can  get  questions 
answered,  etc.,  has  an  advantage  which  tells. 

The  same  thing  may  be  seen  later  in  life.  Take  a  man 
who  has  raised  himself  from  the  ranks  of  common  labor, 
and  just  as  he  is  brought  into  contact  with  men  of  cul- 
ture and  men  of  affairs,  will  he  become  more  intelligent 
and  polished.  Take  two  brothers,  the  sons  of  poor 
parents,  brought  up  in  the  same  home  and  in  the  same 
way.  One  is  put  to  a  rude  trade,  and  never  gets  beyond 
the  necessity  of  making  a  living  by  hard  daily  labor;  the 
other,  commencing  as  an  errand  boy,  gets  a  start  in  an- 
other direction,  and  becomes  finally  a  successful  lawyer, 
merchant,  or  politician.  At  forty  or  fifty  the  contrast 
between  them  will  be  striking,  and  the  unreflecting  will 
credit  it  to  the  greater  natural  ability  which  has  enabled 
the  one  to  push  himself  ahead.  But  just  as  striking  a 
difference  in  manners  and  intelligence  will  be  manifested 
between  two  sisters,  one  of  whom,  married  to  a  man  who 
has  remained  poor,  has  her  life  fretted  with  petty  cares 
and  devoid  of  opportunities,  and  the  other  of  whom  has 
married  a  man  whose  subsequent  position  brings  her  into 
cultured  society  and  opens  to  her  opportunities  which 
refine  taste  and  expand  intelligence.  And  so  deteriora- 
tions may  be  seen.  That  "evil  communications  corrupt 
good  manners"  is  but  an  expression  of  the  general  law 
that  human  character  is  profoundly  modified  by  its  con- 
ditions and  surroundings. 

I  remember  once  seeing,  in  a  Brazilian  seaport,  a  negro 
man  dressed  in  what  was  an  evident  attempt  at  the 
height  of  fashion,  but  without  shoes  and  stockings. 
One  of  the  sailors  with  whom  I  was  in  company,  and  who 
had  made  some  runs  in  the  slave  trade,  had  a  theory  that 
a  negro  was  not  a  man,  but  a  sort  of  monkey,  and  pointed 
to  this  as  evidence  in  proof,  contending  that  it  was  not 
natural  for  a  negro  to  wear  shoes,  and  that  in  his  wild 


490  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAlf  PROGRESS.  Book  Z. 

state  he  would  wear  no  clothes  at  all.  I  afterward 
learned  that  it  was  not  considered  "the  thing"  there 
for  slaves  to  wear  shoes,  just  as  in  England  it  is  not  con- 
sidered the  tiling  for  a  faultlessly  attired  butler  to  wear 
jewelry,  though  for  that  matter  I  have  since  seen  white 
men  at  liberty  to  dress  as  they  pleased  get  themselves 
up  as  incongruously  as  the  Brazilian  slave.  But  a  great 
many  of  the  facts  adduced  as  showing  hereditary  trans- 
mission have  really  no  more  bearing  than  this  of  our 
forecastle  Darwinian. 

That,  for  instance,  a  large  number  of  ci^iminals  and 
recipients  of  public  relief  in  New  York  have  been  shown 
to  have  descended  from  a  pauper  three  or  four  genera- 
tions back  is  extensively  cited  as  showing  hereditary 
transmission.  But  it  shows  nothing  of  the  kind,  inas- 
much as  an  adequate  explanation  of  the  facts  is  nearer. 
Paupers  will  raise  paupers,  even  if  the  children  be  not 
their  own,  just  as  familiar  contact  with  criminals  will 
make  criminals  of  the  children  of  virtuous  parents.  To 
learn  to  rely  on  charity  is  necessarily  to  lose  the  self- 
respect  and  independence  necessary  for  self-reliance 
when  the  struggle  is  hard.  So  true  is  this  that,  as  is 
well  known,  charity  has  the  effect  of  increasing  the  de- 
mand for  charity,  and  it  is  an  open  question  whether 
public  relief  and  private  alms  do  not  in  this  way  do  far 
more  harm  than  good.  And  so  of  the  disposition  of 
children  to  show  the  same  feelings,  tastes,  prejudices,  or 
talents  as  their  parents.  They  imbibe  these  dispositions 
jnst  as  they  imbibe  from  their  habitual  associates.  And 
the  exceptions  prove  the  rule,  as  dislikes  or  revulsions 
may  be  excited. 

And  there  is,  I  think,  a  subtler  influence  which  often 
accounts  for  what  are  looked  upon  as  atavisms  of  char- 
acter— the  same  influence  that  makes  the  boy  who  reads 
dime  novels  want  to  be  a  pirate.  I  once  knew  a  gentle- 
man in  whose  veins  ran  the  blood  of  Indian  chiefs.    He 


Chap.n.  DIFFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION.  491 

used  to  tell  me  traditions  learned  from  his  grandfather, 
which  illustrated  what  is  diflBcult  for  a  white  man  to 
comprehend — the  Indian  habit  of  thought,  the  intense 
but  patient  blood  thirst  of  the  trail,  and  the  fortitude  of 
the  stake.  From  the  way  in  which  he  dwelt  on  these, 
I  have  no  doubt  that  under  certain  circumstances,  highly 
educated,  civilized  man  that  he  was,  he  would  have 
shown  traits  which  would  have  been  looked  on  as  due  to 
his  Indian  blood;  but  which  in  reality  would  have  been 
sufficiently  explained  by  the  broodings  of  his  imagination 
upon  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors.* 

In  any  large  community  we  may  see,  as  between  differ- 
ent classes  and  groups,  differences  of  the  same  kind  as 
those  which  exist  between  communities  which  we  speak 
of  as  differing  in  civilization — differences  of  knowledge, 
belief,  customs,  tastes,  and  speech,  which  in  their  ex- 
tremes show  among  people  of  the  same  race,  living  in 
the  same  country,  differences  almost  as  great  as  those 
between  civilized  and  savage  communities.  As  all  stages 
of  social  development,  from  the  stone  age  up,  are  yet  to 
be  found  in  contemporaneously  existing  communities,  so 
in  the  same  country  and  in  the  same  city  are  to  be 
found,  side  by  side,  groups  which  show  similar  diversi- 
ties. In  such  countries  as  England  and  Germany, 
children  of  the  same  race,  born  and  reared  in  the  same 
place,  will  grow  up,  speaking  the  language  differently, 
holding  different  beliefs,  following  different  customs, 
and  showing  different  tastes;  and  even  in  such  a  country 
as  the  United  States  differences  of  the  same  kind,  though 

*  "Wordsworth,  in  his  "  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle, "has 
in  highly  poetical  form  alluded  to  this  influence: 

Armor  rusting  in  his  halls 

On  the  blood  of  Clifford  calls: 
"  Quell  the  Scot,"  exclaims  the  lance; 
"Bear  me  to  the  heart  of  France," 

Is  the  longing  of  the  shield. 


492  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGBE88.  Book  X. 

not  of  the  same  degree,  may  be  seen  between  different 
circles  or  groups. 

But  these  differences  are  certainly  not  innate.  No 
baby  is  born  a  Methodist  or  Catholic,  to  drop  its  h*s  or 
to  sound  them.  All  these  differences  which  distinguish 
different  groups  or  circles  are  derived  from  association  in 
these  circles. 

The  Janissaries  were  made  up  of  youths  torn  from 
Christian  parents  at  an  early  age,  but  they  were  none 
the  less  fanatical  Moslems  and  none  the  less  exhibited 
all  the  Turkish  traits;  the  Jesuits  and  other  orders  show 
distinct  character,  but  it  is  certainly  not  perpetuated  by 
hereditary  transmissions;  and  even  such  associations  as 
schools  or  regiments,  where  the  components  remain  but  a 
short  time  and  are  constantly  changing,  exhibit  general 
characteristics,  which  are  the  result  of  mental  impres- 
sions perpetuated  by  association. 

Now,  it  is  this  body  of  traditions,  beliefs,  customs, 
laws,  habits,  and  associations,  which  arise  in  every  com- 
munity and  which  surround  every  individual — this 
"super-organic  environment,"  as  Herbert  Spencer  calls 
it,  that,  as  I  take  it,  is  the  great  element  in  determining 
national  character.  It  is  this,  rather  than  hereditary 
transmission,  which  makes  the  Englishman  differ  from 
the  Frenchman,  the  German  from  the  Italian,  the 
American  from  the  Chinaman,  and  the  civilized  man 
from  the  savage  man.  It  is  in  this  way  that  national 
traits  are  preserved,  extended,  or  altered. 

Within  certain  limits,  or,  if  you  choose,  without  limits 
in  itself,  hereditary  transmission  may  develop  or  alter  qual- 
ities, but  this  is  much  more  true  of  the  physical  than  of  the 
mental  part  of  a  man,  and  much  more  true  of  animals  than 
it  is  even  of  the  physical  part  of  man.  Deductions  from 
the  breeding  of  pigeons  or  cattle  will  not  apply  to  man, 
and  the  reason  is  clear.  The  life  of  man,  even  in  his 
rudest  state,  is  infinitely  more  complex.     He  is  constantly 


Chap.JL  DIFFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION.  493 

acted  on  by  an  infinitely  greater  number  of  influences, 
amid  which  the  relative  influence  of  heredity  becomes 
less  and  less.  A  race  of  men  with  no  greater  mental 
activity  than  the  animals — men  who  only  ate,  drank, 
slept,  and  propagated — might,  I  doubt  not,  by  careful 
treatment  and  selection  in  breeding,  be  made,  in  course 
of  time,  to  exhibit  as  great  diversities  in  bodily  shape 
and  character  as  similar  means  have  produced  in  the 
domestic  animals.  But  there  are  no  such  men;  and  in 
men  as  they  are,  mental  influences,  acting  through  the 
mind  upon  the  body,  would  constantly  interrupt  the 
process.  You  cannot  fatten  a  man  whose  mind  is  on  the 
strain  by  cooping  him  up  and  feeding  him  as  you  would 
fatten  a  pig.  In  all  probability  men  have  been  upon  the 
earth  longer  than  many  species  of  animals.  They  have 
been  separated  from  each  other  under  differences  of 
climate  that  produce  the  most  marked  differences  in 
animals,  and  yet  the  physical  differences  between  the 
different  races  of  men  are  hardly  greater  than  the  differ- 
ence between  white  horses  and  black  horses — they  are 
certainly  nothing  like  as  great  as  between  dogs  of  the 
same  sub-species,  as,  for  instance,  the  different  varieties 
of  the  terrier  or  spaniel.  And  even  these  physical  differ- 
ences between  races  of  men,  it  is  held  by  those  who 
account  for  them  by  natural  selection  and  hereditary 
transmission,  were  brought  out  when  man  was  much 
nearer  the  animal — that  is  to  say,  when  he  had  less  mind. 

And  if  this  be  true  of  the  physical  constitution  of 
man,  in  how  much  higher  degree  is  it  true  of  his  mental 
constitution?  All  our  physical  parts  we  bring  with  us 
into  the  world;  but  the  mind  develops  afterward. 

There  is  a  stage  in  the  growth  of  every  organism  in 
which  it  cannot  be  told,  except  by  the  environment, 
whether  the  animal  that  is  to  be  will  be  fish  or  reptile, 
monkey  or  man.  And  so  with  the  new-born  infant; 
whether  the  mind  that  is  yet  to  awake  to  consciousness 


494  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROQBESS.  Book  X. 

and  power  is  to  be  English  or  German,  American  or 
Chinese — the  mind  of  a  civilized  man  or  the  mind  of  a 
savage — depends  entirely  on  the  social  environment  in 
which  it  is  placed. 

Take  a  number  of  infants  born  of  the  most  highly 
civilized  parents  and  transport  them  to  an  uninhabited 
country.  Suppose  them  in  some  miraculous  way  to  be 
sustained  until  they  oorae  of  age  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves, and  what  would  you  have?  More  helpelss  savages 
than  any  we  know  of.  They  would  have  fire  to  discover; 
the  rudest  tools  and  weapons  to  invent;  language  to  con- 
struct. They  would,  in  short,  have  to  stumble  their  way 
to  the  simplest  knowledge  which  the  lowest  races  now 
possess,  just  as  a  child  learns  to  walk.  That  they  would 
in  time  do  all  these  things  I  have  not  the  slightest 
doubt,  for  all  these  possibilities  are  latent  in  the  human 
mind  just  as  the  power  of  walking  is  latent  in  the  human 
frame,  but  I  do  not  believe  they  would  do  them  any  bet- 
ter or  worse,  any  slower  or  quicker,  than  the  children  of 
barbarian  parents  placed  in  the  same  conditions.  Given 
the  very  highest  mental  powers  that  exceptional  in- 
dividuals have  ever  displayed,  and  what  could  mankind 
be  if  one  generation  were  separated  from  the  next  by  an 
interval  of  time,  as  are  the  seventeen-year  locusts?  One 
such  interval  would  reduce  mankind,  not  to  savagery, 
but  to  a  condition  compared  with  which  savagery,  as  we 
know  it,  would  seem  civilization. 

And,  reversely,  suppose  a  number  of  savage  infants 
could,  unknown  to  the  mothers,  for  even  this  would  be 
necessary  to  make  the  experiment  a  fair  one,  be  substi- 
tuted for  as  many  children  of  civilization,  can  we  sup- 
pose that  growing  up  they  would  show  any  difference? 
I  think  no  one  who  has  mixed  much  with  different  peo- 
ples and  classes  will  think  so.  The  great  lesson  that  is 
thus  learned  is  that  "human  nature  is  human  nature  all 
the  world  over.*'    And  this  lesson,  too,  may  be  learned 


Chap.n.  DIFFEKESrCES  IK  CIVILIZATION.  495 

in  the  library.  I  speak  not  so  much  of  the  accounts  of 
travelers,  for  the  accounts  given  of  savages  by  the  civi- 
lized men  -who  write  books  are  very  often  just  such  ac- 
counts as  savages  would  give  of  us  did  they  make  flying 
visits  and  then  write  books;  but  of  those  mementos  of 
the  life  and  thoughts  of  other  times  and  other  peoples, 
which,  translated  into  our  language  of  to-day,  are  like 
glimpses  of  our  own  lives  and  gleams  of  our  own  thought. 
The  feeling  they  inspire  is  that  of  the  essential  similarity 
of  men.  "This,"  says  Emanuel  Deutsch — "this  is  the 
end  of  all  investigation  into  history  or  art.  TJiey  were 
even  as  we  are." 

There  is  a  people  to  be  found  in  all  parts  of  the 
world  who  well  illustrate  what  peculiarities  are  due 
to  hereditary  transmission  and  what  to  transmission  by 
association.  The  Jews  have  maintained  the  purity  of 
their  blood  more  scrupulously  and  for  a  far  longer  time 
than  any  of  the  European  races,  yet  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  the  only  characteristic  that  can  be  attributed 
to  this  is  that  of  physiognomy,  and  this  is  in  reality  far 
less  marked  than  is  conventionally  supposed,  as  any  one 
who  will  take  the  trouble  may  see  on  observation.  Al- 
though they  have  constantly  married  among  themselves, 
the  Jews  have  everywhere  been  modified  by  their  sur- 
roundings— the  English,  Russian,  Polish,  German,  and 
Oriental  Jews  differing  from  each  other  in  many  respects 
as  much  as  do  the  other  people  of  those  countries.  Yet 
they  have  much  in  common,  and  have  everywhere  pre- 
served their  individuality.  The  reason  is  clear.  It  is 
the  Hebrew  religion — and  certainly  religion  is  not  trans- 
mitted by  generation,  but  by  association — which  has 
everywhere  preserved  the  distinctiveness  of  the  Hebrew 
race.  This  religion,  which  children  derive,  not  as  they 
derive  their  physical  characteristics,  but  by  precept  and 
association,  is  not  merely  exclusive  in  its  teachings,  but 
has,  by  engendering  suspicion  and  dislike^  produced  a 


496  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

powerful  outside  pressure  which,  even  more  than  its  pre- 
cepts, has  everywhere  constituted  of  the  Jews  a  com- 
munity within  a  community.  Thus  has  been  built  up  and 
maintained  a  certain  peculiar  environment  which  gives 
a  distinctive  character.  Jewish  intermarriage  has  been 
the  eJBEect,  not  the  cause  of  this.  What  persecution 
which  stopped  short  of  taking  Jewish  children  from  their 
parents  and  bringing  them  up  outside  of  this  peculiar 
environment  could  not  accomplish,  will  be  accomplished 
by  the  lessening  intensity  of  religious  belief,  as  is  already 
evident  in  the  United  States,  where  the  distinction  be- 
tween Jew  and  Gentile  is  fast  disappearing. 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  influence  of  this  social 
net  or  environment  will  explain  what  is  so  often  taken  as 
proof  of  race  differences — the  difficulty  which  less  civi- 
lized races  show  in  receiving  higher  civilization,  and  the 
manner  in  which  some  of  them  melt  away  before  it. 
Just  as  one  social  environment  persists,  so  does  it  render 
it  difficult  or  impossible  for  those  subject  to  it  to  accept 
another. 

The  Chinese  character  is  fixed  if  that  of  any  people  is. 
Yet  the  Chinese  in  California  acquire  American  modes 
of  working,  trading,  the  use  of  machinery,  etc.,  with 
such  facility  as  to  prove  that  they  have  no  lack  of  flexi- 
bility, or  natural  capacity.  That  they  do  not  change  in 
other  respects  is  due  to  the  Chinese  environment  that 
still  persists  and  still  surrounds  them.  Coming  from 
China,  they  look  forward  to  return  to  China,  and  live 
while  here  in  a  little  China  of  their  own,  just  as  the 
Englishmen  in  India  maintain  a  little  England.  It  is 
not  merely  that  we  naturally  seek  association  with  those 
who  share  our  peculiarities,  and  that  thus  language, 
religion  and  custom  tend  to  persist  where  individuals 
are  not  absolutely  isolated;  but  that  these  differences 
provoke  an  external  pressure,  which  compels  such  asso- 
ciation. 


Chap.  11.  DIFFERENCES  IN   CIVILIZATION.  497 

These  obvious  principles  fully  account  for  all  the 
phenomena  which  are  seen  in  the  meeting  of  one  stage  or 
body  of  culture  with  another,  without  resort  to  the 
theory  of  ingrained  differences.  For  instance,  as  com- 
parative philology  has  shown,  the  Hindoo  is  of  the  same 
race  as  his  English  conqueror,  and  individual  instances 
have  abundantly  shown  that  if  he  could  be  placed  com- 
pletely and  exclusively  in  the  English  environment 
(which,  as  before  stated,  could  be  thoroughly  done  only 
by  placing  infants  in  English  families  in  such  a  way  that 
neither  they,  as  they  grow  up,  nor  those  around  them, 
would  be  conscious  of  any  distinction)  one  generation 
would  be  all  required  to  thoroughly  implant  European 
civilization.  But  the  progress  of  English  ideas  and 
habits  in  India  must  be  necessarily  very  slow,  because 
they  meet  there  the  web  of  ideas  and  habits  constantly 
perpetuated  through  an  immense  population,  and  inter- 
laced with  every  act  of  life. 

Mr.  Bagehot  ("Physics  and  Politics")  endeavors  to  ex- 
plain the  reason  why  barbarians  waste  away  before  our 
civilization,  while  they  did  not  before  that  of  the  an- 
cients, by  assuming  that  the  progress  of  civilization 
has  given  us  tougher  physical  constitutions.  After  al- 
luding to  the  fact  that  there  is  no  lament  in  any  clas- 
sical writer  for  the  barbarians,  but  that  everywhere  the 
barbarian  endured  the  contact  with  the  Eoman  and  the 
Eoman  allied  himself  to  the  barbarian,  he  says  (pp.  47-8) : 

"  Savages  in  the  first  year  of  the  Christian  era  were  pretty  much 
what  they  were  in  the  eighteen  hundredth;  and  if  they  stood  the  con- 
tact of  ancient  civilized  naen  and  cannot  stand  ours,  it  follows  that 
our  race  is  presumably  tougher  than  the  ancient;  for  we  have  to  bear, 
and  do  bear,  the  seeds  of  greater  diseases  than  the  ancients  carried 
with  them.  We  may  use,  perhaps,  the  unvarying  savage  as  a 
meter  to  gauge  the  vigor  of  the  constitution  to  whose  contact  he  is 
exposed." 

Mr.  Bagehot  does  not  attempt  to  explain  how  it  is  that 


498  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

eighteen  hundred  years  ago  civilization  did  not  give  the 
like  relative  advantage  over  barbarism  that  it  does  now. 
But  there  is  no  use  of  talking  about  that,  or  of  the  lack 
of  proof  that  the  human  constitution  has  been  a  whit 
improved.  To  any  one  who  has  seen  how  the  contact  of 
our  civilization  affects  the  inferior  races,  a  much  readier 
though  less  flattering  explanation  will  occur. 

It  is  not  because  our  constitutions  are  naturally 
tougher  than  those  of  the  savage,  that  diseases  which  are 
comparatively  innocuous  to  us  are  certain  death  to  him. 
It  is  that  we  know  and  have  the  means  of  treating  those 
diseases,  while  he  is  destitute  both  of  knowledge  and 
means.  The  same  diseases  with  which  the  scum  of  civi- 
lization that  floats  in  its  advance  inoculates  the  savage 
would  prove  as  destructive  to  civilized  men,  if  they  knew 
no  better  than  to  let  them  run,  as  he  in  his  ignorance 
has  to  let  them  run;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  were  as 
destructive,  until  we  found  out  how  to  treat  them.  And 
not  merely  this,  but  the  effect  of  the  impingement  of 
civilization  upon  barbarism  is  to  weaken  the  power  of  the 
savage  without  bringing  him  into  the  conditions  that 
give  power  to  the  civilized  man.  While  his  habits  and 
customs  still  tend  to  persist,  and  do  persist  as  far  as  they 
can,  the  conditions  to  which  they  were  adapted  are  forci- 
bly changed.  He  is  a  hunter  in  a  land  stripped  of  game; 
a  warrior  deprived  of  his  arms  and  called  on  to  plead  in 
legal  technicalities.  He  is  not  merely  placed  between 
cultures,  but,  as  Mr.  Bagehot  says  of  the  European  half- 
breeds  in  India,  he  is  placed  between  moralities,  and 
learns  the  vices  of  civilization  without  its  virtues.  He 
loses  his  accustomed  means  of  subsistence,  he  loses  self- 
respect,  he  loses  morality;  he  deteriorates  and  dies  away. 
The  miserable  creatures  who  may  be  seen  hanging 
around  frontier  towns  or  railroad  stations,  ready  to  beg, 
or  steal,  or  solicit  a  viler  commerce,  are  not  fair  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Indian  before  the  white  man  had  en- 


Chap.n.  DIFFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION.  499 

croached  upon  his  hunting  grounds.  They  have  lost  the 
strength  and  virtues  of  their  former  state,  without  gain- 
ing those  of  a  higher.  In  fact,  civilization,  as  it  pnshes 
the  red  man,  shows  no  virtues.  To  the  Anglo-Saxon  of 
the  frontier,  as  a  rule,  the  aborigine  has  no  rights  which 
the  white  man  is  bound  to  respect.  He  is  impoverished, 
misunderstood,  cheated,  and  abused.  He  dies  out,  as, 
under  similar  conditions,  we  should  die  out.  He  disap- 
pears before  civilization  as  the  Romanized  Britons  dis- 
appeared before  Saxon  barbarism. 

The  true  reason  why  there  is  no  lament  in  any  classic 
writer  for  the  barbarian,  but  that  the  Roman  civilization 
assimilated  instead  of  destroying,  is,  I  take  it,  to  be  found 
not  only  in  the  fact  that  the  ancient  civilization  was 
much  nearer  akin  to  the  barbarians  which  it  met,  but  in 
the  more  important  fact  that  it  was  not  extended  as  ours 
has  been.  It  was  carried  forward,  not  by  an  advancing 
line  of  colonists,  but  by  conquest  which  merely  reduced 
the  new  province  to  general  subjection,  leaving  the 
social,  and  generally  the  political  organization  of  the 
people  to  a  great  degree  unimpaired,  so  that,  without 
shattering  or  deterioration,  the  process  of  assimilation 
went  on.  In  a  somewhat  similar  way  the  civilization  of 
Japan  seems  to  be  now  assimilating  itself  to  European 
civilization. 

In  America  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  exterminated,  in- 
stead of  civilizing,  the  Indian,  simply  because  he  has  not 
brought  the  Indian  into  his  environment,  nor  yet  has  the 
contact  been  in  such  a  way  as  to  induce  or  permit  the 
Indian  web  of  habitual  thought  and  custom  to  be 
changed  rapidly  enough  to  meet  the  new  conditions  into 
which  he  has  been  brought  by  the  proximity  of  new  and 
powerful  neighbors.  That  there  is  no  innate  impedi- 
ment to  the  reception  of  our  civilization  by  these  un- 
civilized races  has  been  shown  over  and  over  again  in 
individual  cases.    And  it  has  likewise  been  shown,  so  far 


600  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  Z. 

as  the  experiments  have  heen  permitted  to  go,  by  the 
Jesuits  in  Paraguay,  the  Franciscans  in  California,  and 
the  Protestant  missionaries  on  some  of  the  Pacific  islands. 
The  assumption  of  physical  improvement  in  the  race 
within  any  time  of  which  we  have  knowledge  is  utterly 
without  warrant,  and  within  the  time  of  which  Mr. 
Bagehot  speaks,  it  is  absolutely  disproved.  We  know 
from  classic  statues,  from  the  burdens  carried  and  the 
marches  made  by  ancient  soldiers,  from  the  records  of 
runners  and  the  feats  of  gymnasts,  that  neither  in  pro- 
portions nor  strength  has  the  race  improved  within  two 
thousand  years.  But  the  assumption  of  mental  improve- 
ment, which  is  even  more  confidently  and  generally 
jnade,  is  still  more  preposterous.  As  poets,  artists, 
architects,  philosophers,  rhetoricians,  statesmen,  or  sol- 
diers, can  modern  civilization  show  individuals  of  greater 
mental  power  than  can  the  ancient?  There  is  no  use 
in  recalling  names — every  schoolboy  knows  them.  For 
our  models  and  personifications  of  mental  power  we  go 
back  to  the  ancients,  and  if  we  can  for  a  moment 
imagine  the  possibility  of  what  is  held  by  that  oldest  and 
most  widespread  of  all  beliefs — that  belief  which  Less- 
ing  declared  on  this  account  the  most  probably  true, 
though  he  accepted  it  on  metaphysical  grounds — and 
suppose  Homer  or  Virgil,  Demosthenes  or  Cicero,  Alex- 
ander, Hannibal  or  Caesar,  Plato  or  Lucretius,  Euclid  or 
Aristotle,  as  re-entering  this  life  again  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  can  we  suppose  that  they  would  show  any  in- 
feriority to  the  men  of  to-day?  Or  if  we  take  any  period 
since  the  classic  age,  even  the  darkest,  or  any  previous 
period  of  which  we  know  anything,  shall  we  not  find 
men  who  in  the  conditions  and  degree  of  knowledge  of 
their  times  showed  mental  power  of  as  high  an  order  as 
men  show  now?  And  among  the  less  advanced  races  do 
we  not  to-day,  whenever  our  attention  is  called  to  them, 
find  men  who  in  their  conditions  exhibit  mental  qualities 


Chap.n.  DIFFERElfCES  IN  CIVILIZATION.  501 

as  great  as  civilization  can  show?  Did  the  invention  of 
the  railroad,  coming  when  it  did,  prove  any  greater  in- 
ventive power  than  did  the  invention  of  the  wheelbarrow 
when  wheelbarrows  were  not?  We  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion are  raised  far  above  those  who  have  preceded  us 
and  those  of  the  less  advanced  races  who  are  our  contem- 
poraries. But  it  is  because  we  stand  on  a  pyramid,  not 
that  we  are  taller.  What  the  centuries  have  done  for  us 
is  not  to  increase  our  stature,  but  to  build  up  a  structure 
on  which  we  may  plant  our  feet. 

Let  me  repeat:  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  all  men 
possess  the  same  capacities,  or  are  mentally  alike,  any 
more  than  I  mean  to  say  that  they  are  physically  alike. 
Among  all  the  countless  millions  who  have  come  and 
gone  on  this  earth,  there  were  probably  never  two  who 
either  physically  or  mentally  were  exact  counterparts. 
Nor  yet  do  I  mean  to  say  that  there  are  n-ot  as  clearly 
marked  race  differences  in  mind  as  there  are  clearly 
marked  race  differences  in  body.  I  do  not  deny  the 
influence  of  heredity  in  transmitting  peculiarities  of 
mind  in  the  same  way,  and  possibly  to  the  same  degree, 
as  bodily  peculiarities  are  transmitted.  But  neverthe- 
less, there  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  common  standard  and 
natural  symmetry  of  mind,  as  there  is  of  body,  toward 
which  all  deviations  tend  to  return.  The  conditions 
under  which  we  fall  may  produce  such  distortions  as  the 
Flatheads  produce  by  compressing  the  heads  of  their 
infants  or  the  Chinese  by  binding  their  daughters*  feet. 
But  as  Flathead  babies  continue  to  be  born  with  naturally 
shaped  heads  and  Chinese  babies  with  naturally  shaped 
feet,  so  does  nature  seem  to  revert  to  the  normal  mental 
type.  A  child  no  more  inherits  his  father's  knowledge 
than  he  inherits  his  father's  glass  eye  or  artificial  leg; 
the  child  of  the  most  ignorant  parents  may  become  a 
pioneer  of  science  or  a  leader  of  thought. 

But  this  is  the  great  fact  with  which  we  are  concerned: 


502  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  Boole  X. 

That  the  differences  between  the  people  of  communities 
in  different  places  and  at  different  times,  which  we  call 
differences  of  civilization,  are  not  differences  which  inhere 
in  the  individuals,  but  differences  which  inhere  in  the 
society;  that  they  are  not,  as   Herbert   Spencer  holds, 
differences  resulting  from  differences  in  the  units;  but 
that  they  are  differences  resulting  from  the  conditions 
under  which  these  units  are  brought  in  the  society.     In 
short,  I  take  the  explanation  of  the  differences  which  dis- 
tinguish communities  to  be  this:  That  each  society,  small 
or  great,  necessarily  weaves  for  itself  a  web  of  knowledge, 
beliefs,  customs,  language,  tastes,  institutions,  and  laws. 
Into  this  web,  woven  by  each  society,  or  rather,  into  these 
webs,  for  each  community  above  the  simplest  is  made  up 
of  minor  societies,   which    overlap  and   interlace  each 
other,  the  individual  is  received  at  birth  and  continues 
until  his  death.     This  is  the  matrix  in  which  mind  un- 
folds and  from  which  it  takes  its  stamp.     This  is  the  way 
in  which   customs,  and   religions,  and  prejudices,  and 
tastes,  and    languages,  grow  up  and  are  perpetuated. 
This  is  the  way  that  skill  is  transmitted  and  knowledge 
is  stored  up,  and  the  discoveries  of  one  time  made  the 
common  stock  and  stepping  stone  of  the  next.     Though 
it  is  this  that  often  offers  the  most  serious  obstacles  to 
progress,  it  is  this  that  makes  progress  possible.     It  is 
this  that  enables  any  schoolboy  in  our  time  to  learn  in  a 
few  hours  more  of  the  universe  than  Ptolemy  knew;  that 
places  the  most  humdrum  scientist  far  above  the  level 
reached  by  the  giant  mind  of  Aristotle.     This  is  to  the 
race  what  memory  is  to  the  individual.     Our  wonderful 
arts,  our  far-reaching  science,  our  marvelous  inventions 
— they  have  come  through  this. 

Human  progress  goes  on  as  the  advances  made  by  one 
generation  are  in  this  way  secured  as  the  common  prop- 
erty of  the  next,  and  made  the  starting  point  for  new 
advanoeq. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE  LAW  OF  HUMAlf  PROGEESS. 

What,  then,  is  the  law  of  human  progress — the  law 
under  which  civilization  advances? 

It  must  explain  clearly  and  definitely,  and  not  by 
vague  generalities  or  superficial  analogies,  why,  though 
mankind  started  presumably  with  the  same  capacities 
and  at  the  same  time,  there  now  exist  such  wide  differ- 
ences in  social  development.  It  must  account  for  the 
arrested  civilizations  and  for  the  decayed  and  destroyed 
civilizations;  for  the  general  facts  as  to  the  rise  of  civili- 
zation, and  for  the  petrifying  or  enervating  force  which 
the  progress  of  civilization  has  heretofore  always  evolved. 
It  must  account  for  retrogression  as  well  as  for  progres- 
sion; for  the  differences  in  general  character  between 
Asiatic  and  European  civilizations;  for  the  difference 
between  classical  and  modern  civilizations;  for  the  differ- 
ent rates  at  which  progress  goes  on;  and  for  those  bursts, 
and  starts,  and  halts  of  progress  which  are  so  marked  as 
minor  phenomena.  And,  thus,  it  must  show  us  what 
are  the  essential  conditions  of  progress,  and  what  social 
adjustments  advance  and  what  retard  it. 

It  is  not  difiBcult  to  discover  such  a  law.  We  have  but 
to  look  and  we  may  see  it.  I  do  not  pretend  to  give  it 
scientific  precision,  but  merely  to  point  it  out. 

The  incentives  to  progress  are  the  desires  inherent  in 
human  nature — the  desire  to  gratify  the  wants  of  the 
animal  nature,  the  wants  of  the  intellectual  nature,  and 
the  wants  of  the  sympathetic  nature;  the  desire  to  be,  to 


504  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGEESS.  Book  X. 

know,  and  to  do — desires  that  short  of  infinity  can  never 
be  satisfied,  as  they  grow  by  what  they  feed  on. 

Mind  is  the  instrument  by  which  man  advances,  and  by 
which  each  advance  is  secured  and  made  the  vantage 
ground  for  new  advances.  Though  he  may  not  by  tak- 
ing thought  add  a  cubit  to  his  stature,  man  may  by 
taking  thought  extend  his  knowledge  of  the  universe 
and  his  power  over  it,  in  what,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  is  an 
infinite  degree.  The  narrow  span  of  human  life  allows 
the  individual  to  go  but  a  short  distance,  but  though 
each  generation  may  do  but  little,  yet  generations,  suc- 
ceeding to  the  gain  of  their  predecessors,  may  gradually 
elevate  the  status  of  mankind,  as  coral  polyps,  building 
one  generation  upon  the  work  of  the  other,  gradually 
elevate  themselves  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

Mental  power  is,  therefore,  the  motor  of  progress,  and 
men  tend  to  advance  in  proportion  to  the  mental  power 
expended  in  progression — the  mental  power  which  is  de- 
voted to  the  extension  of  knowledge,  the  improvement 
of  methods,  and  the  betterment  of  social  conditions. 

Now  mental  power  is  a  fixed  quantity — that  is  to  say, 
there  is  a  limit  to  the  work  a  man  can  do  with  his  mind,  as 
there  is  to  the  work  he  can  do  with  his  body;  therefore, 
the  mental  power  which  can  be  devoted  to  progress  is  only 
what  is  left  after  what  is  required  for  non-progressive 
purposes. 

These  non-progressive  purposes  in  which  mental  power 
is  consumed  may  be  classified  as  maintenance  and  con- 
flict. By  maintenance  I  mean,  not  only  the  support  of 
existence,  but  the  keeping  up  of  the  social  condition  and 
the  holding  of  advances  already  gained.  By  conflict  I 
mean  not  merely  warfare  and  preparation  for  warfare, 
but  all  expenditure  of  mental  power  in  seeking  the  grati- 
fication of  desire  at  the  expense  of  others,  and  in  resist- 
acce  to  such  aggression. 

To  compare  society  to  a  boat.     Her  progress  through 


Ckap.lU.  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  605 

the  water  will  not  depend  upon  the  exertion  of  her  crew^ 
but  upon  the  exertion  devoted  to  propelling  her.  This 
will  be  lessened  by  any  expenditure  of  force  required  for 
bailing,  or  any  expenditure  of  force  in  fighting  among 
themselves,  or  in  pulling  in  different  directions. 

Now,  as  in  a  separated  state  the  whole  powers  of  man 
are  required  to  maintain  existence,  and  mental  power  is 
set  free  for  higher  uses  only  by  the  association  of  men 
in  communities,  which  permits  the  division  of  labor  and 
all  the  economies  which  come  with  the  co-operation 
of  increased  numbers,  association  is  the  first  essential  of 
progress.  Improvement  becomes  possible  as  men  come 
together  in  peaceful  association,  and  the  wider  and  closer 
the  association,  the  greater  the  possibilities  of  improve- 
ment. And  as  the  wasteful  expenditure  of  mental  power 
in  conflict  becomes  greater  or  less  as  the  moral  law  which 
accords  to  each  an  equality  of  rights  is  ignored  or  is 
recognized,  equality  (or  justice)  is  the  second  essential  of 
progress. 

Thus  association  in  equality  is  the  law  of  progress. 
Association  frees  mental  power  for  expenditure  in  im- 
provement, and  equality,  or  justice,  or  freedom — for  the 
terms  here  signify  the  same  thing,  the  recognition  of  the 
moral  law — prevents  the  dissipation  of  this  power  in 
fruitless  struggles. 

Here  is  the  law  of  progress,  which  will  explain  all 
diversities,  all  advances,  all  halts,  and  retrogressions. 
Men  tend  to  progress  just  as  they  come  closer  together, 
and  by  co-operation  with  each  other  increase  the  mental 
power  that  may  be  devoted  to  improvement,  but  just  as 
conflict  is  provoked,  or  association  develops  inequality 
of  condition  and  power,  this  tendency  to  progression  is 
lessened,  checked,  and  finally  reversed. 

Given  the  same  innate  capacity,  and  it  is  evident  that 
social  development  will  go  on  faster  or  slower,  will  stop 
or  turn  back,  according  to  the  resistances  it  meets.    In 


506  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  J. 

a  general  way  these  obstacles  to  improvement  may,  in 
relation  to  the  society  itself,  be  classed  as  external  and 
internal — the  first  operating  with  greater  force  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  civilization,  the  latter  becoming  more 
important  in  the  later  stages. 

Man  is  social  in  his  nature.  He  does  not  require  to  be 
caught  and  tamed  in  order  to  induce  him  to  live  with 
his  fellows.  The  utter  helplessness  with  which  he  enters 
the  world,  and  the  long  period  required  for  the  maturity 
of  his  powers,  necessitate  the  family  relation:  which,  as 
we  may  observe,  is  wider,  and  in  its  extensions  stronger, 
among  the  ruder  than  among  the  more  cultivated  peo- 
ples. The  first  societies  are  families,  expanding  into 
tribes,  still  holding  a  mutual  blood  relationship,  and  even 
when  they  have  become  great  nations  claiming  a  common 
descent. 

Given  beings  of  this  kind,  placed  on  a  globe  of  such 
diversified  surface  and  climate  as  this,  and  it  is  evident 
that,  even  with  equal  capacity,  and  an  equal  start,  social 
development  must  be  very  difiEerent.  The  first  limit  or 
resistance  to  association  will  come  from  the  conditions  of 
physical  nature,  and  as  these  greatly  vary  with  locality, 
corresponding  differences  in  social  progress  must  show 
themselves.  The  net  rapidity  of  increase,  and  the  closeness 
with  which  men,  as  they  increase,  can  keep  together, 
will,  in  the  rude  state  of  knowledge  in  which  reliance 
for  subsistence  must  be  principally  upon  the  spontaneous 
offerings  of  nature,  very  largely  depend  upon  climate, 
soil,  and  physical  conformation.  Where  much  animal 
food  and  warm  clothing  are  required;  where  the  earth 
seems  poor  and  niggard;  where  the  exuberant  life  of 
tropical  forests  mocks  barbarous  man's  puny  efforts  to 
control;  where  mountains,  deserts,  or  arms  of  the  sea 
separate  and  isolate  men;  association,  and  the  power  of 
improvement  which  it  evolves,  can  at  first  go  but  a  little 
vay.     But  on  the  rich  plains  of  warm  climates,  where 


Chap.  in.  THE   LAW  OF  HUMAN   PEOGRESS.  607 

human  existence  can  be  maintained  with  a  smaller  ex- 
penditure of  force,  and  from  a  much  smaller  area,  men 
can  keep  closer  together,  and  the  mental  power  which 
can  at  first  be  devoted  to  improvement  is  much  greater. 
Hence  civilization  naturally  first  arises  in  the  great  val- 
leys and  table  lands  where  we  find  its  earliest  monuments. 
But  these  diversities  in  natural  conditions,  not  merely 
thus  directly  produce  diversities  in  social  development, 
but,  by  producing  diversities  in  social  development,  bring 
out  in  man  himself  an  obstacle,  or  rather  an  active  coun- 
terforce,  to  improvement.  As  families  and  tribes  are 
separated  from  each  other,  the  social  feeling  ceases  to 
operate  between  them,  and  differences  arise  in  language, 
custom,  tradition,  religion — in  short,  in  the  whole  social 
web  which  each  community,  however  small  or  large,  con- 
stantly spins.  With  these  differences,  prejudices  grow, 
animosities  spring  up,  contact  easily  produces  quarrels, 
aggression  begets  aggression,  and  wrong  kindles  re- 
venge.* And  so  between  these  separate  social  aggregates 
arises  the  feeling  of  Ishmael  and  the  spirit  of  Cain,  war- 
fare becomes  the  chronic  and  seemingly  natural  relation 
of  societies  to  each  other,  and  the  powers  of  men  are  ex- 
pended in  attack  or  defense,  in  mutual  slaughter  and 

*How  easy  it  is  for  ignorance  to  pass  into  contempt  and  dislike; 
how  natural  it  is  for  us  to  consider  any  difference  in  manners,  cus- 
toms, religion,  etc.,  as  proof  of  the  inferiority  of  those  who  differ 
from  us,  any  one  who  has  emancipated  himself  in  any  degree  from 
prejudice,  and  who  mixes  with  different  classes,  may  see  in  civilized 
society.     In  religion,  for  instance,  the  spirit  of  the  hymn — 

"I'd  rather  be  a  Baptist,  and  wear  a  shining  face. 
Than  for  to  be  a  Methodist  and  always  fall  from  grace," 

is  observable  in  all  denominations.  As  the  English  Bishop  said, 
"Orthodoxy  is  my  doxy,  and  heterodoxy  is  any  other  doxy,"  while 
the  universal  tendency  is  to  classify  all  outside  of  the  orthodoxies 
and  heterodoxies  of  the  prevailing  religion  as  heathens  or  atheists. 
And  the  like  tendency  is  observable  as  to  all  other  differences. 


508  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAIf  PROGRESS.  Booh  X. 

mutual  destruction  of  wealth,  or  in  warlike  preparations. 
How  long  this  hostility  persists,  the  protective  tariffs 
and  the  standing  armies  of  the  civilized  world  to-day 
bear  witness;  how  difficult  it  is  to  get  over  the  idea  that 
it  is  not  theft  to  steal  from  a  foreigner,  the  difficulty  in 
procuring  an  international  copyright  act  will  show.  Can 
we  wonder  at  the  perpetual  hostilities  of  tribes  and  clans? 
Can  we  wonder  that  when  each  community  was  isolated 
from  the  others — when  each,  uninfluenced  by  the  others, 
was  spinning  its  separate  web  of  social  environment, 
which  no  individual  can  escape,  that  war  should  have 
been  the  rule  and  peace  the  exception?  "They  were 
even  as  we  are." 

Now,  warfare  is  the  negation  of  association.  The 
separation  of  men  into  diverse  tribes,  by  increasing  war- 
fare, thus  checks  improvement;  while  in  the  localities 
where  a  large  increase  in  numbers  is  possible  without 
much  separation,  civilization  gains  the  advantage  of  ex- 
emption from  tribal  war,  even  when  the  community  as  a 
whole  is  carrying  on  warfare  beyond  its  borders.  Thus, 
where  the  resistance  of  nature  to  the  close  association  of 
men  is  slightest,  the  counterforce  of  warfare  is  likely  at 
first  to  be  least  felt;  and  in  the  rich  plains  where  civili- 
zation first  begins,  it  may  rise  to  a  great  height  while 
scattered  tribes  are  yet  barbarous.  And  thus,  when 
small,  separated  communities  exist  in  a  state  of  chronic 
warfare  which  forbids  advance,  the  first  step  to  their  civ- 
ilization is  the  advent  of  some  conquering  tribe  or  nation 
that  unites  these  smaller  communities  into  a  larger  one,  in 
which  internal  peace  is  preserved.  Where  this  power  of 
peaceable  association  is  broken  up,  either  by  external 
assaults  or  internal  dissensions,  the  advance  ceases  and 
retrogression  begins. 

But  it  is  not  conquest  alone  that  has  operated  to  pro- 
mote association,  and,  by  liberating  mental  power  from 
the  necessities  of  warfare,  to   promote  civilization.    If 


Chap.  in.  THE  LAW  OP  HTTMAK  PROGRESS.  509 

the  diversities  of  climate,  soil,  and  configuration  of  the 
earth's  surface  operate  at  first  to  separate  mankind,  they 
also  operate  to  encourage  exchange.  And  commerce, 
which  is  in  itself  a  form  of  association  or  co-operation, 
operates  to  promote  civilization,  not  only  directly,  but 
by  building  up  interests  which  are  opposed  to  warfare, 
and  dispelling  the  ignorance  which  is  the  fertile  mother 
of  prejudices  and  animosities. 

And  so  of  religion.  Though  the  forms  it  has  assumed 
and  the  animosities  it  has  aroused  have  often  sundered 
men  and  produced  warfare,  yet  it  has  at  other  times  been 
the  means  of  promoting  association.  A  common  worship 
has  often,  as  among  the  Greeks,  mitigated  war  and 
furnished  the  basis  of  union,  while  it  is  from  the  triumph 
of  Christianity  over  the  barbarians  of  Europe  that  modern 
civilization  springs.  Had  not  the  Christian  Church  ex- 
isted when  the  Roman  Empire  went  to  pieces,  Europe, 
destitute  of  any  bond  of  association,  might  have  fallen  to 
a  condition  not  much  above  that  of  the  North  American 
Indians  or  only  received  civilization  with  an  Asiatic  im- 
press from  the  conquering  scimiters  of  the  invading 
hordes  which  had  been  welded  into  a  mighty  power  by  a 
religion  which,  springing  up  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia, 
had  united  tribes  separated  from  time  immemorial,  and, 
thence  issuing,  brought  into  the  association  of  a  common 
faith  a  great  part  of  the  human  race. 

Looking  over  what  we  know  of  the  history  of  the  world, 
we  thus  see  civilization  everywhere  springing  up  where 
men  are  brought  into  association,  and  everywhere  disap- 
pearing as  this  association  is  broken  up.  Thus  the 
Roman  civilization,  spread  over  Europe  by  the  conquests 
which  insured  internal  peace,  was  overwhelmed  by  the 
incursions  of  the  northern  nations  that  broke  society 
again  into  disconnected  fragments;  and  the  progress  that 
now  goes  on  in  our  modern  civilization  began  as  the 
feudal  system  again  began  to  associate  men  in  larger 


510  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

commnnities,  and  the  spiritual  supremacy  of  Rome  to 
bring  these  communities  into  a  common  relation,  as  her 
legions  had  done  before.  As  the  feudal  bonds  grew  into 
national  autonomies,  and  Christianity  worked  the  amel- 
ioration of  manners,  brought  forth  the  knowledge  that 
during  the  dark  days  she  had  hidden,  bound  the  threads 
of  peaceful  union  in  her  all-pervading  organization,  and 
taught  association  in  her  religious  orders,  a  greater  prog- 
ress became  possible,  which,  as  men  have  been  brought 
into  closer  and  closer  association  and  co-operation,  has 
gone  on  with  greater  and  greater  force. 

But  we  shall  never  understand  the  course  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  the  varied  phenomena  which  its  history  presents, 
without  a  consideration  of  what  I  may  term  the  internal 
resistances,  or  counter  forces,  which  arise  in  the  heart  of 
advancing  society,  and  which  can  alone  explain  how  a 
civilization  once  fairly  started  should  either  come  of  itself 
to  a  halt  or  be  destroyed  by  barbarians. 

The  mental  power,  which  is  the  motor  of  social  prog- 
ress, is  set  free  by  association,  which  is,  what,  perhaps, 
it  may  be  more  properly  called,  an  integration.  Society 
in  this  process  becomes  more  complex;  its  individuals 
more  dependent  upon  each  other.  Occupations  and 
functions  are  specialized.  Instead  of  wandering,  popu- 
lation becomes  fixed.  Instead  of  each  man  attempting 
to  supply  all  of  his  wants,  the  various  trades  and  indus- 
tries are  separated — one  man  acquires  skill  in  one  thing, 
and  another  in  another  thing.  So,  too,  of  knowledge, 
the  body  of  which  constantly  tends  to  become  vaster  than 
one  man  can  grasp,  and  is  separated  into  different  parts, 
which  different  individuals  acquire  and  pursue.  So,  too, 
the  performance  of  religious  ceremonies  tends  to  pass 
into  the  hands  of  a  body  of  men  specially  devoted  to  that 
purpose,  and  the  preservation  of  order,  the  administra- 
tion of  justice,  the  assignment  of  public  duties  and  the 
distribution  of  awards,  the  conduci  of  war,  etc.,  to  be 


Chap.nt  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  511 

made  the  special  functions  of  an  organized  government. 
In  short,  to  use  the  language  in  which  Herbert  Spencer 
has  defined  evolution,  the  development  of  society  is,  in 
relation  to  its  component  individuals,  the  passing  from 
an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity.  The  lower  the  stage  of  social 
development,  the  more  society  resembles  one  of  those 
lowest  of  animal  organisms  which  are  without  organs  or 
limbs,  and  from  which  a  part  may  be  cut  and  yet  live. 
The  higher  the  stage  of  social  development,  the  more 
society  resembles  those  higher  organisms  in  which  func- 
tions and  powers  are  specialized,  and  each  member  is 
vitally  dependent  on  the  others. 

Now,  this  process  of  integration,  of  the  specialization 
of  functions  and  powers,  as  it  goes  on  in  society,  is,  by 
virtue  of  what  is  probably  one  of  the  deepest  laws  of 
human  nature,  accompanied  by  a  constant  liability  to 
inequality.  I  do  not  mean  that  inequality  is  the  neces- 
sary result  of  social  growth,  but  that  it  is  the  constant 
tendency  of  social  growth  if  unaccompanied  by  changes 
in  social  adjustments,  which,  in  the  new  conditions  that 
growth  produces,  will  secure  equality.  I  mean,  so  to 
speak,  that  the  garment  of  laws,  customs,  and  political 
institutions,  which  each  society  weaves  for  itself,  is  con- 
stantly tending  to  become  too  tight  as  the  society  devel- 
ops. I  mean,  so  to  speak,  that  man,  as  he  advances, 
threads  a  labyrinth,  in  which,  if  he  keeps  straight  ahead, 
he  will  infallibly  lose  his  way,  and  through  which  reason 
and  justice  can  alone  keep  him  continuously  in  an  ascend- 
ing path. 

For,  while  the  integration  which  accompanies  growth 
tends  in  itself  to  set  free  mental  power  to  work  improve- 
ment, there  is,  both  with  increase  of  numbers  and  with 
increase  in  complexity  of  the  social  organization,  a  coun- 
ter tendency  set  up  to  the  production  of  a  state  of  in- 
equality, which  wastes  mental  power,  and,  as  it  increases, 
brings  improvement  to  a  halt. 


513  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN   PEOQRESS.  Book  Z. 

To  trace  to  its  highest  expression  the  law  which  thus 
operates  to  evolve  with  progress  the  force  which  stops 
progress,  would  be,  it  seems  to  me,  to  go  far  to  the  solu- 
tion of  a  problem  deeper  than  that  of  the  genesis  of  the 
material  universe — the  problem  of  the  genesis  of  evil. 
Let  me  content  myself  with  pointing  out  the  manner  in 
which,  as  society  develops,  there  arise  tendencies  which 
check  development. 

There  are  two  qualities  of  human  nature  which  it  will 
be  well,  however,  to  first  call  to  mind  The  one  is  the 
power  of  habit — the  tendency  to  continue  to  do  things  in 
the  same  way;  the  other  is  the  possibility  of  mental  and 
moral  deterioration.  The  effect  of  the  first  in  social 
development  is  to  continue  habits,  customs,  laws  and 
methods,  long  after  they  have  lost  their  original  useful- 
ness, and  the  effect  of  the  other  is  to  permit  the  growth 
of  institutions  and  modes  of  thought  from  which  the 
normal  perceptions  of  men  instinctively  revolt. 

Now  the  growth  and  development  of  society  not 
merely  tend  to  make  each  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  all,  and  to  lessen  the  influence  of  individuals,  even 
over  their  own  conditions,  as  compared  with  the  influence 
of  society;  but  the  effect  of  association  or  integration  is 
to  give  rise  to  a  collective  power  which  is  distinguish- 
able from  the  sum  of  individual  powers.  Analogies,  or, 
perhaps,  rather  illustrations  of  the  same  law,  may  be 
found  in  all  directions.  As  animal  organisms  increase  in 
complexity,  there  arise,  above  the  life  and  power  of  the 
parts,  a  life  and  power  of  the  integrated  whole;  above  the 
capability  of  involuntary  movements,  the  capability  of 
voluntary  movements.  The  actions  and  impulses  of 
bodies  of  men  are,  as  has  often  been  observed,  different 
from  those  which,  under  the  same  circumstances,  would 
be  called  forth  in  individuals.  The  fighting  qualities  of 
a  regiment  may  be  very  different  from  those  of  the  in- 
dividual soldiers.    But  there  is  no  need  of  illustrations. 


Chap.  111.  THE   LAW   OF  HUMAN   PKOGRESS.  513 

In  our  inquiries  into  the  nature  and  rise  of  rent,  we 
traced  tlie  very  thing  to  which  I  allude.  Where  popula- 
tion is  sparse,  land  has  no  value;  just  as  men  congregate 
together,  the  value  of  land  appears  and  rises — a  clearly 
distinguishable  thing  from  the  values  produced  by  in- 
dividual effort;  a  value  which  springs  from  association, 
which  increases  as  association  grows  greater,  and  disap- 
pears as  association  is  broken  up.  And  the  same  thing 
is  true  of  power  in  other  forms  than  those  generally 
expressed  in  terms  of  wealth. 

Now,  as  society  grows,  the  disposition  to  continue 
previous  social  adjustments  tends  to  lodge  this  collective 
power,  as  it  arises,  in  the  hands  of  a  portion  of  the  com- 
munity; and  this  unequal  distribution  of  the  wealth  and 
power  gained  as  society  advances  tends  to  produce 
greater  inequality,  since  aggression  grows  by  what  it 
feeds  on,  and  the  idea  of  justice  is  blurred  by  the  habit- 
ual toleration  of  injustice. 

In  this  way  the  patriarchal  organization  of  society 
can  easily  grow  into  hereditary  monarchy,  in  which  the 
king  is  as  a  god  on  earth,  and  the  masses  of  the  people 
mere  slaves  of  his  caprice.  It  is  natural  that  the  father 
should  be  the  directing  head  of  the  family,  and  that  at 
his  death  the  eldest  son,  as  the  oldest  and  most  experi- 
enced member  of  the  little  community,  should  succeed  to 
the  headship.  But  to  continue  this  arrangement  as  the 
family  expands,  is  to  lodge  power  in  a  particular  line, 
and  the  power  thus  lodged  necessarily  continues  to  in- 
crease, as  the  common  stock  becomes  larger  and  larger, 
and  the  power  of  the  community  grows.  The  head  of 
the  family  passes  into  the  hereditary  king,  who  comes  to 
look  upon  himself  and  to  be  looked  upon  by  others  as  a 
being  of  superior  rights.  With  the  growth  of  the  collec- 
tive power  as  compared  with  the  power  of  the  individual, 
his  power  to  reward  and  to  punish  increases,  and  so  in- 
crease the  inducements  to  flatter  and  to  fear  him;  until 


514  THE   LAW  OF   HUMAN   PROQEESS.  Book  X. 

finally,  if  the  process  be  not  disturbed,  a  nation  grovels 
at  the  foot  of  a  throne,  and  a  hundred  thousand  men  toil 
for  fifty  years  to  prepare  a  tomb  for  one  of  their  own 
mortal  kind. 

So  the  war-chief  of  a  little  band  of  savages  is  but  one 
of  their  number,  whom  they  follow  as  their  bravest  and 
most  wary.  But  when  large  bodies  come  to  act  together, 
personal  selection  becomes  more  difficult,  a  blinder 
obedience  becomes  necessary  and  can  be  enforced,  and 
from  the  very  necessities  of  warfare  when  conducted  on 
a  large  scale  absolute  power  arises. 

And  so  of  the  specialization  of  function.  There  is  a 
manifest  gain  in  productive  power  when  social  growth 
has  gone  so  far  that  instead  of  every  producer  being  sum- 
moned from  his  work  for  fighting  purposes,  a  regular 
military  force  can  be  specialized;  but  this  inevitably 
tends  to  the  concentration  of  power  in  the  hands  of  the 
military  class  or  their  chiefs.  The  preservation  of  in- 
ternal order,  the  administration  of  justice,  the  construc- 
tion and  care  of  public  works,  and,  notably,  the  observ- 
ances of  religion,  all  tend  in  similar  manner  to  pass  into 
the  hands  of  special  classes,  whose  disposition  it  is  to 
magnify  their  function  and  extend  their  power. 

But  the  great  cause  of  inequality  is  in  the  natural 
monopoly  which  is  given  by  the  possession  of  land.  The 
first  perceptions  of  men  seem  always  to  be  that  land  is 
common  property;  but  the  rude  devices  by  which  this  is 
at  first  recognized — such  as  annual  partitions  or  cultiva- 
tion in  common — are  consistent  with  only  a  low  stage  of 
development.  The  idea  of  property,  which  naturally 
arises  with  reference  to  things  of  human  production,  is 
easily  transferred  to  land,  and  an  institution  which  when 
population  is  sparse  merely  secures  to  the  improver  and 
user  the  due  reward  of  his  labor,  finally,  as  population 
becomes  dense  and  rent  arises,  operates  to  strip  the  pro- 
ducer of  his  wages.     Not  merely  this,  but  the  appropria- 


Chap.  in.  THE   LAW   OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  515 

tion  of  rent  for  public  purposes,  which  is  the  only  way 
in  which,  with  anything  like  a  high  development,  land 
can  be  readily  retained  as  common  property,  becomes, 
when  political  and  religious  power  passes  into  the  hands 
of  a  class,  the  ownership  of  the  land  by  that  class,  and 
the  rest  of  the  community  become  merely  tenants.  And 
wars  and  conquests,  which  tend  to  the  concentration  of 
political  power  and  to  the  institution  of  slavery,  naturally 
result,  where  social  growth  has  given  land  a  value,  in 
the  appropriation  of  the  soil.  A  dominant  class,  who 
concentrate  power  in  their  hands,  will  likewise  soon  con- 
centrate ownership  of  the  land.  To  them  will  fall  large 
partitions  of  conquered  land,  which  the  former  inhabit- 
ants will  till  as  tenants  or  serfs,  and  the  public  domain, 
or  common  lands,  which  in  the  natural  course  of  social 
growth  are  left  for  awhile  in  every  country,  and  in  which 
state  the  primitive  system  of  village  culture  leaves 
pasture  and  woodland,  are  readily  acquired,  as  we  see  by 
modern  instances.  And  inequality  once  established,  the 
ownership  of  land  tends  to  concentrate  as  development 
goes  on. 

I  am  merely  attempting  to  set  forth  the  general  fact 
that  as  a  social  development  goes  on,  inequality  tends 
to  establish  itself,  and  not  to  point  out  the  particular 
sequence,  which  must  necessarily  vary  with  different  con- 
ditions. But  this  main  fact  makes  intelligible  all  the 
phenomena  of  petrifaction  and  retrogression.  The  unequal 
distribution  of  the  power  and  wealth  gained  by  the  in- 
tegration of  men  in  society  tends  to  check,  and  finally  to 
counterbalance,  the  force  by  which  improvements  are 
made  and  society  advances.  On  the  one  side,  the  masses 
of  the  community  are  compelled  to  expend  their  mental 
powers  in  merely  maintaining  existence.  On  the  other 
side,  mental  power  is  expended  in  keeping  up  and  inten- 
sifying the  system  of  inequality,  in  ostentation,  luxury, 
and  warfare.     A  community  divided  into  a  class  that 


616  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

rules  and  a  class  that  is  ruled — into  the  very  rich  and  the 
very  poor,  may  "build  like  giants  and  finish  like  jewel- 
ers;" but  it  will  be  monuments  of  ruthless  pride  and 
barren  vanity,  or  of  a  religion  turned  from  its  office  of 
elevating  man  into  an  instrument  for  keeping  him  down. 
Invention  may  for  awhile  to  some  degree  go  on;  but  it 
will  be  the  invention  of  refinements  in  luxury,  not  the 
inventions  that  relieve  toil  and  increase  power.  In  the 
arcana  of  temples  or  in  the  chambers  of  court  physicians 
knowledge  may  still  be  sought;  but  it  will  be  hidden  as  a 
secret  thing,  or  if  it  dares  come  out  to  elevate  common 
thought  or  brighten  common  life,  it  will  be  trodden 
down  as  a  dangerous  innovator.  For  as  it  tends  to  lessen 
the  mental  power  devoted  to  improvement,  so  does  in- 
equality tend  to  render  men  adverse  to  improvement. 
How  strong  is  the  disposition  to  adhere  to  old  methods 
among  the  classes  who  are  kept  in  ignorance  by  being 
compelled  to  toil  for  a  mere  existence,  is  too  well  known 
to  require  illustration,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  con- 
servatism of  the  classes  to  whom  the  existing  social 
adjustment  gives  special  advantages  is  equally  apparent. 
This  tendency  to  resist  innovation,  even  though  it  be 
improvement,  is  observable  in  every  special  organization 
— in  religion,  in  law,  in  medicine,  in  science,  in  trade 
guilds;  and  it  becomes  intense  just  as  the  organization 
is  close.  A  close  corporation  has  always  an  instinctive 
dislike  of  innovation  and  innovators,  which  is  but  the 
expression  of  an  instinctive  fear  that  change  may  tend  to 
throw  down  the  barriers  which  hedge  it  in  from  the  com- 
mon herd,  and  so  rob  it  of  importance  and  power;  and  it 
is  always  disposed  to  guard  carefully  its  special  knowl- 
edge or  skill. 

It  is  in  this  way  that  petrifaction  succeeds  progress. 
The  advance  of  inequality  necessarily  brings  improve- 
ment to  a  halt,  and  as  it  still  persists  or  provokes 
unavailing  reactions,  draws  even  upon  the  mental  power 
necessary  for  maintenance,  and  retrogression  begins. 


Chap.ni.  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  617 

These  principles  make  intelligible  the  history  of  civili- 
zation. 

In  the  localities  where  climate,  soil,  and  physical  con- 
formation tended  least  to  separate  men  as  they  increased, 
and  where,  accordingly,  the  first  civilizations  grew  up, 
the  internal  resistances  to  progress  would  naturally 
develop  in  a  more  regular  and  thorough  manner  than 
where  smaller  communities,  which  in  their  separation 
had  developed  diversities,  were  afterward  brought  to- 
gether into  a  closer  association.  It  is  this,  it  seems  to 
me,  which  accounts  for  the  general  characteristics  of  the 
earlier  civilizations  as  compared  with  the  later  civiliza- 
tions of  Europe.  Such  homogeneous  communities,  devel- 
oping from  the  first  without  the  jar  of  conflict  between 
different  customs,  laws,  religions,  etc.,  would  show  a 
much  greater  uniformity.  The  concentrating  and  con- 
servative forces  would  all,  so  to  speak,  pull  together. 
Eival  chieftains  would  not  counterbalance  each  other, 
nor  diversities  of  belief  hold  the  growth  of  priestly 
influence  in  check.  Political  and  religious  power,  wealth 
and  knowledge,  would  thus  tend  to  concentrate  in  the 
same  centers.  The  same  causes  which  tended  to  pro- 
duce the  hereditary  king  and  hereditary  priest  would 
tend  to  produce  the  hereditary  artisan  and  laborer,  and 
to  separate  society  into  castes.  The  power  which  associa- 
tion sets  free  for  progress  would  thus  be  wasted,  and 
barriers  to  further  progress  be  gradually  raised.  The  sur- 
plus energies  of  the  masses  would  be  devoted  to  the  con- 
struction of  temples,  palaces,  and  pyramids;  to  minister- 
ing to  the  pride  and  pampering  the  luxury  of  their  rulers; 
and  should  any  disposition  to  improvement  arise  among 
the  classes  of  leisure  it  would  at  once  be  checked  by  the 
dread  of  innovation.  Society  developing  in  this  way 
must  at  length  stop  in  a  conservatism  which  permits  no 
further  progress. 

How  long  such  a  state  of  complete  petrifaction,  when 


518  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN-  PROGRESS.  Book  Z. 

once  reached,  will  continue,  seems  to  depend  upon  ex- 
ternal causes,  for  the  iron  bonds  of  the  social  environ- 
ment which  grows  up  repress  disintegrating  forces  as 
well  as  improvement.  Such  a  community  can  be  most 
easily  conquered,  for  the  masses  of  the  people  are  trained 
to  a  passive  acquiescence  in  a  life  of  hopeless  labor.  If 
the  conquerors  merely  take  the  place  of  the  ruling  class, 
as  the  Hyksos  did  in  Egypt  and  the  Tartars  in  China, 
everything  will  go  on  as  before.  If  they  ravage  and  de- 
stroy, the  glory  of  palace  and  temple  remains  but  in 
ruins,  population  becomes  sparse,  and  knowledge  and 
art  are  lost. 

European  civilization  differs  in  character  from  civiliza- 
tions of  the  Egyptian  type  because  it  springs  not  from 
the  association  of  a  homogeneous  people  developing 
from  the  beginning,  or  at  least  for  a  long  time,  under 
the  same  conditions,  but  from  the  association  of  peoples 
who  in  separation  had  acquired  distinctive  social  char- 
acteristics, and  whose  smaller  organizations  longer  pre- 
vented the  concentration  of  power  and  wealth  in  one 
center.  The  physical  conformation  of  the  Grecian  pen- 
insula is  such  as  to  separate  the  people  at  first  into  a 
number  of  small  communities.  As  those  petty  republics 
and  nominal  kingdoms  ceased  to  waste  their  energies  in 
warfare,  and  the  peaceable  co-operation  of  commerce  ex- 
"tended,  the  light  of  civilization  blazed  up.  But  the 
principle  of  association  was  never  strong  enough  to  save 
Greece  from  inter-tribal  war,  and  when  this  was  put  an 
end  to  by  conquest,  the  tendency  to  inequality,  which 
had  been  combated  with  various  devices  by  Grecian  sages 
and  statesmen,  worked  its  result,  and  Grecian  valor, 
art,  and  literature  became  things  of  the  past.  And 
so  in  the  rise  and  extension,  the  decline  and  fall,  of 
Roman  civilization,  may  be  seen  the  working  of  these 
two  principles  of  association  and  equality,  from  the 
combination  of  which  springs  progress. 


Chap.  in.  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  519 

Springing  from  the  association  of  the  independent 
husbandmen  and  free  citizens  of  Italy,  and  gaining  fresh 
strength  from  conquests  which  brought  hostile  nations 
into  common  relations,  the  Roman  power  hushed  the 
world  in  peace.  But  the  tendency  to  inequality,  check- 
ing real  progress  from  the  first,  increased  as  the  Eoman 
civilization  extended.  The  Roman  civilization  did  not 
petrify  as  did  the  homogeneous  civilizations  where  the 
strong  bonds  of  custom  and  superstition  that  held  the 
people  in  subjection  probably  also  protected  them,  or  at 
any  rate  kept  the  peace  between  rulers  and  ruled;  it 
rotted,  declined  and  fell.  Long  before  Goth  or  Vandal 
had  broken  through  the  cordon  of  the  legions,  even  while 
her  frontiers  were  advancing,  Rome  was  dead  at  th^ 
heart.  Great  estates  had  ruined  Italy.  Inequality  had  / 
dried  up  the  strength  and  destroyed  the  vigor  of  the^ 
Roman  world.  Government  became  despotism,  which 
even  assassination  could  not  temper;  patriotism  became 
servility;  vices  the  most  foul  flouted  themselves  in  pub- 
lic; literature  sank  to  puerilities;  learning  was  forgotten; 
fertile  districts  became  waste  without  the  ravages  of  war 
— everywhere  inequality  produced  decay,  political,  men- 
tal, moral,  and  material.  The  barbarism  which  over^ 
whelmed  Rome  came  not  from  without,  but  from  within^ 
It  was  the  necessary  product  of  the  system  which  had 
substituted  slaves  and  colonii  for  the  independent  hus- 
bandmen of  Italy,  and  carved  the  provinces  into  estates 
of  senatorial  families. 

Modern  civilization  owes  its  superiority  to  the  growth 
of  equality  with  the  growth  of  association.  Two  great 
causes  contributed  to  this — the  splitting  up  of  concen- 
trated power  into  innumerable  little  centers  by  the  influx 
of  the  Northern  nations,  and  the  influence  of  Christian- 
ity. Without  the  first  there  would  have  been  the  petri- 
faction and  slow  decay  of  the  Eastern  Empire,  where 
church  and  state  were  closely  married  and  loss  of  exter- 


620  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN^  PROaRESS.  Book  '.\ 

nal  power  brought  no  relief  of  internal  tyranny.  And 
but  for  the  other  there  would  have  been  barbarism, 
without  principle  of  association  or  amelioration.  Tha 
petty  chiefs  and  allodial  lords  who  everywhere  grasped 
local  sovereignty  held  each  other  in  check.  Italian  cities 
recovered  their  ancient  liberty,  free  towns  were  founded, 
village  communities  took  root,  and  serfs  acquired 
rights  in  the  soil  they  tilled.  The  leaven  of  Teutonic 
ideas  of  equality  worked  through  the  disorganized  and 
disjointed  fabric  of  society.  And  although  society  was 
split  up  into  an  innumerable  number  of  separated 
fragments,  yet  the  idea  of  closer  association  was  always 
present — it  existed  in  the  recollections  of  a  universal 
empire;  it  existed  in  the  claims  of  a  universal  church. 

Though  Christianity  became  distorted  and  alloyed  in 
percolating  through  a  rotting  civilization;  though 
pagan  gods  were  taken  into  her  pantheon,  and  pagan 
forms  into  her  ritual,  and  pagan  ideas  into  her  creed; 
yet  her  essential  idea  of  the  equality  of  men  was  never 
wholly  destroyed.  And  two  things  happened  of  the 
utmost  moment  to  incipient  civilization — the  establish- 
ment of  the  papacy  and  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy.  The 
first  prevented  the  spiritual  power  from  concentrating  in 
the  same  lines  as  the  temporal  power;  and  the  latter 
prevented  the  establishment  of  a  priestly  caste,  during  a 
time  when  all  power  tended  to  hereditary  form. 

In  her  efforts  for  the  abolition  of  slavery;  in  her  Truce 
of  God;  in  her  monastic  orders;  in  her  councils  which 
united  nations,  and  her  edicts  which  ran  without  regard 
to  political  boundaries;  in  the  low-born  hands  in  which 
she  placed  a  sign  before  which  the  proudest  knelt;  in  her 
bishops  who  by  consecration  became  the  peers  of  the 
greatest  nobles;  in  her  ''Servant  of  Servants,"  for  so 
his  official  title  ran,  who,  by  virtue  of  the  ring  of  a  simple 
fisherman,  claimed  the  right  to  arbitrate  between  nations, 
and  whose  stirrup  was  held  by  kings;  the  Church,  in 


Chap.  in.  THE   LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGKESS.  521 

spite  of  everything,  was  yet  a  promoter  of  association,  a 
witness  for  the  natural  equality  of  men;  and  by  the 
Church  herself  was  nurtured  a  spirit  that,  when  her  early 
work  of  association  and  emancipation  was  well-nigh  done 
— when  the  ties  she  had  knit  had  become  strong,  and  the 
learning  she  had  preserved  had  been  given  to  the  world — 
broke  the  chains  with  which  she  would  have  fettered  the 
human  mind,  and  in  a  great  part  of  Europe  rent  her 
organization. 

The  rise  and  growth  of  European  civilization  is  too 
vast  and  complex  a  subject  to  be  thrown  into  proper  per- 
spective and  relation  in  a  few  paragraphs;  but  in  all  its 
details,  as  in  its  main  features,  it  illustrates  the  truth 
that  progress  goes  on  just  as  society  tends  toward  closer 
association  and  greater  equality.  Civilization  is  co- 
operation. Union  and  liberty  are  its  factors.  The  great 
extension  of  association — not  alone  in  the  growth  of 
larger  and  denser  communities,  but  in  the  increase  of 
commerce  and  the  manifold  exchanges  which  knit  each 
community  together  and  link  them  with  other  though 
widely  separated  communities;  the  growth  of  interna- 
tional and  municipal  law;  the  advances  in  security  of 
property  and  of  person,  in  individual  liberty,  and  towards 
democratic  government — advances,  in  short,  towards  the 
recognition  of  the  equal  rights  to  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness — it  is  these  that  make  our  modern 
civilization  so  much  greater,  so  much  higher,  than  any 
that  has  gone  before.  It  is  these  that  have  set  free  the 
mental  power  which  has  rolled  back  the  veil  of  ignorance 
which  hid  all  but  a  small  portion  of  the  globe  from  men's 
knowledge;  which  has  measured  the  orbits  of  the  circling 
spheres  and  bids  us  see  moving,  pulsing  life  in  a  drop  of 
water;  which  has  opened  to  us  the  antechamber  of 
nature's  mysteries  and  read  the  secrets  of  a  long-buried 
past;  which  has  harnessed  in  our  service  physical  forces 
beside  which  man's  efEorts  are  puny;  and  increased  pro- 
ductive power  by  a  thousand  great  inventions. 


523  THE   LAW  OF  HUMAIT  PROGRESS.  Booh  X. 

In  that  spirit  of  fatalism  to  which  I  have  alluded  as 
pervading  current  literature,  it  is  the  fashion  to  speak 
even  of  war  and  slavery  as  means  of  human  progress. 
But  war,  which  is  the  opposite  of  association,  can  aid 
progress  only  when  it  prevents  further  war  or  breaks 
down  anti-social  barriers  which  are  themselves  passive 
war. 

As  for  slavery,  I  cannot  see  how  it  could  ever  have 
aided  in  establishing  freedom,  and  freedom,  the  synonym 
of  equality,  is,  from  the  very  rudest  state  in  which  man 
can  be  imagined,  the  stimulus  and  condition  of  progress. 
Auguste  Comte's  idea  that  the  institution  of  slavery  de- 
stroyed cannibalism  is  as  fanciful  as  Elia's  humorous 
notion  of  the  way  mankind  acquired  a  taste  for  roast  pig. 
It  assumes  that  a  propensity  that  has  never  been  found 
developed  in  man  save  as  the  result  of  the  most  un- 
natural conditions — the  direst  want  or  the  most  brutaliz- 
ing superstitions* — is  an  original  impulse,  and  that  he, 
even  in  his  lowest  state  the  highest  of  all  animals,  has 
natural  appetites  which  the  nobler  brutes  do  not  show. 
And  so  of  the  idea  that  slavery  began  civilization  by 
giving  slave  owners  leisure  for  improvement. 

Slavery  never  did  and  never  could  aid  improvement. 
Whether  the  community  consist  of  a  single  master  and  a 
single  slave,  or  of  thousands  of  masters  and-  millions  of 
slaves,  slavery  necessarily  involves  a  waste  of  human 
power;  for  not  only  is  slave  labor  less  productive  than 
free  labor,  but  the  power  of  masters  is  likewise  wasted  in 
holding  and  watching  their  slaves,  and  is  called  away 
from  directions  in  which  real  improvement  lies.  From 
first  to  last,  slavery,  like  every  other  denial  of  the  natural 

*The  Sandwich  Islanders  did  honor  to  their  good  chiefs  by  eating 
their  bodies.  Their  bad  and  tyrannical  chiefs  they  would  not 
touch.  The  New  Zealanders  had  a  notion  that  by  eating  their  ene- 
mies they  acquired  their  strength  and  valor.  And  this  seems  to  be 
the  general  origin  of  eating  prisoners  of  war. 


Chap.  III.  THE  LAW   OF  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  523 

equality  of  men,  has  hampered  and  prevented  progress. 
Just  in  proportion  as  slavery  plays  an  important  part  in 
the  social  organization  does  improvement  cease.  That 
in  the  classical  world  slavery  was  so  universal,  is  un- 
doubtedly the  reason  why  the  mental  activity  which  so 
polished  literature  and  refined  art  never  hit  on  any  of 
the  great  discoveries  and  inventions  which  distinguish 
modern  civilization.  No  slave-holding  people  ever  were 
an  inventive  people.  In  a  slave-holding  community  the 
upper  classes  may  become  luxurious  and  polished;  but 
never  inventive.  Whatever  degrades  the  laborer  and 
robs  him  of  the  fruits  of  his  toil  stifles  the  spirit  of 
invention  and  forbids  the  utilization  of  inventions  and 
discoveries  even  when  made.  To  freedom  alone  is  given 
the  spell  of  power  which  summons  the  genii  in  whose 
keeping  are  the  treasures  of  earth  and  the  viewless  forces 
of  the  air. 

The  law  of  human  progress,  what  is  it  but  the  moral 
law?  Just  as  social  adjustments  promote  justice,  just  as 
they  acknowledge  the  equality  of  right  between  man  and 
man,  just  as  they  insure  to  each  the  perfect  liberty  which 
is  bounded  only  by  the  equal  liberty  of  every  other,  must 
civilization  advance.  Just  as  they  fail  in  this,  must 
advancing  civilization  come  to  a  halt  and  recede.  Polit- 
ical economy  and  social  science  cannot  teach  any  lessons 
that  are  not  embraced  in  the  simple  truths  that  were 
taught  to  poor  fishermen  and  Jewish  peasants  by  One 
who  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  was  crucified — the  sim- 
ple truths  which,  beneath  the  warpings  of  selfishness  and 
the  distortions  of  superstition,  seem  to  underlie  every 
religion  that  has  ever  striven  to  formulate  the  spiritual 
yearnings  of  man. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HOW  MODEBN  CIVILIZATIOK  MAY  DECLINE. 

The  conclusion  we  have  thus  reached  harmonizes  com- 
pletely with  our  previous  conclusions. 

This  consideration  of  the  law  of  human  progress  not 
only  brings  the  politico-economic  laws,  which  in  this  in- 
quiry we  have  worked  out,  within  the  scope  of  a  higher 
law — perhaps  the  very  highest  law  our  minds  can  grasp — 
but  it  proves  that  the  making  of  land  common  property 
in  the  way  I  have  proposed  would  give  an  enormous  im- 
petus to  civilization,  while  the  refusal  to  do  so  must  en- 
tail' retrogression.  A  civilization  like  ours  must  either 
advance  or  go  back;  it  cannot  stand  still.  It  is  not  like 
those  homogeneous  civilizations,  such  as  that  of  the  Nile 
Valley,  which  molded  men  for  their  places  and  put  them 
in  it  like  bricks  into  a  pyramid.  It  much  more  resembles 
that  civilization  whose  rise  and  fall  is  within  historic 
times,  and  from  which  it  sprung. 

There  is  just  now  a  disposition  to  scoff  at  any  impli- 
cation that  we  are  not  in  all  respects  progressing,  and 
the  spirit  of  our  times  is  that  of  the  edict  which  the  flat- 
tering premier  proposed  to  the  Chinese  Emperor  who 
burned  the  ancient  books — "that  all  who  may  dare  to 
speak  together  about  the  She  and  the  Shoo  be  put  to 
death;  that  those  who  make  mention  of  the  past  so  as 
to  blame  the  present  be  put  to  death  along  with  their 
relatives. '* 

Yet  it  is  evident  that  there  have  been  times  of  de- 
cline, just  as  there  have  been  times  of  advance;  and  it  is 
further  evident  that  these  epochs  of  decline  could  not  at 
first  have  been  generally  recognized. 


Chap.  IV.   HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION"  MAY   DECLINE.      535 

He  would  have  been  a  rash  man  who,  when  Augustus 
was  changing  the  Eome  of  brick  to  the  Kome  of  marble, 
when  wealth  was  augmenting  and  magnificence  increas- 
ing, when  victorious  legions  were  extending  the  frontier, 
when  manners  were  becoming  more  refined,  language 
more  polished,  and  literature  rising  to  higher  splendors 
— he  would  have  been  a  rash  man  who  then  would  have 
said  that  Eome  was  entering  her  decline.  Yet  such  was 
the  case. 

And  whoever  will  look  may  see  that  though  our  civili- 
zation is  apparently  advancing  with  greater  rapidity  than 
ever,  the  same  cause  which  turned  Koman  progress  into 
retrogression  is  operating  now. 

What  has  destroyed  every  previous  civilization  has 
been  the  tendency  to  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth 
and  power.  This  same  tendency,  operating  with  in- 
creasing force,  is  observable  in  our  civilization  to-day, 
showing  itself  in  every  progressive  community,  and  with 
greater  intensity  the  more  progressive  tha  community. 
Wages  and  interest  tend  constantly  to  fall,  rent  to  rise, 
the  rich  to  become  very  much  richer,  the  poor  to  become 
more  helpless  and  hopeless,  and  the  middle  class  to  be 
swept  away. 

I  have  traced  this  tendency  to  its  cause.  I  have  shown 
by  what  simple  means  this  cause  may  be  removed.  I 
now  wish  to  point  out  how,  if  this  is  not  done,  progress 
must  turn  to  decadence,  and  modern  civilization  decline 
to  barbarism,  as  have  all  previous  civilizations.  It  is 
worth  while  to  point  out  how  this  may  occur,  as  many 
people,  being  unable  to  see  how  progress  may  pass  into 
retrogression,  conceive  such  a  thing  impossible.  Gibbon, 
for  instance,  thought  that  modern  civilization  could 
never  be  destroyed  because  there  remained  no  barbarians 
to  overrun  it,  and  it  is  a  common  idea  that  the  inven- 
tion of  printing  by  so  multiplying  books  has  prevented 
the  possibility  of  knowledge  ever  again  being  lost. 


526  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

The  conditions  of  social  progress,  as  we  have  traced 
the  law,  are  association  and  equality.  The  general 
tendency  of  modern  development,  since  the  time  when 
we  can  first  discern  the  gleams  of  civilization  in  the 
darkness  which  followed  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire, 
has  been  toward  political  and  legal  equality — to  the 
abolition  of  slavery;  to  the  abrogation  of  status;  to  the 
sweeping  away  of  hereditary  privileges;  to  the  substitu- 
tion of  parliamentary  for  arbitrary  government;  to  the 
right  of  private  judgment  in  matters  of  religion;  to  the 
more  equal  security  in  person  and  property  of  high  and 
low,  weak  and  strong;  to  the  greater  freedom  of  move- 
ment and  occupation,  of  speech  and  of  the  press.  The 
history  of  modern  civilization  is  the  history  of  advances 
in  this  direction — of  the  struggles  and  triumphs  of  per- 
sonal, political,  and  religious  freedom.  And  the  general 
law  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  just  as  this  tendency  has 
asserted  itself  civilization  has  advanced,  while  just  as  it 
has  been  repressed  or  forced  back  civilization  has  been 
checked. 

This  tendency  has  reached  its  full  expression  in  the 
American  Kepublic,  where  political  and  legal  rights  are 
absolutely  eq^ual^  and,  owing  to  the  system  of  rotation  in 
oflBce,  even  the  growth  of  a  bureaucracy  is  prevented; 
where  every  religious  belief  or  non-belief  stands  on  the 
same  footing;  where  every  boy  may  hope  to  be  President, 
every  man  has  an  equal  voice  in  public  affairs,  and  every 
official  is  mediately  or  immediately  dependent  for  the 
short  lease  of  his  place  upon  a  popular  vote.  This  tend- 
ency has  yet  some  triumphs  to  win  in  England,  in 
extending  the  suffrage,  and  sweeping  away  the  vestiges  of 
monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  prelacy;  while  in  such  countries 
as  Germany  and  Russia,  where  divine  right  is  yet  a  good 
deal  more  than  a  legal  fiction,  it  has  a  considerable  dis- 
tance to  go.  But  it  is  the  prevailing  tendency,  and  how 
soon  Europe  will  be  completely  republican  is  only  a  mat- 


Chap.  IV.  HOW  MODERIT  CIVILIZATIOiT  MAY  DECLINE.      627 

ter  of  time,  or  rather  of  accident.  The  United  States 
are  therefore,  in  this  respect,  the  most  advanced  of  all 
the  great  nations,  in  a  direction  in  which  all  are  advanc- 
ing, and  in  the  United  States  we  see  just  how  much  this 
tendency  to  personal  and  political  freedom  can  of  itself 
accomplish. 

Now,  the  first  effect  of  the  tendency  to  political  equal- 
ity was  to  the  more  equal  distribution  of  wealth  and 
power;  for,  while  population  is  comparatively  sparse, 
inequality  in  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  principally  due 
to  the  inequality  of  personal  rights,  and  it  is  only  as 
material  progress  goes  on  that  the  tendency  to  inequality 
involved  in  the  reduction  of  land  to  private  ownership 
strongly  appears.  But  it  is  now  manifest  that  absolute 
political  equality  does  not  in  itself  prevent  the  tendency 
to  inequality  involved  in  the  private  ownership  of  land, 
and  it  is  further  evident  that  political  equality,  co-existing 
with  an  increasing  tendency  to  the  unequal  distribution 
of  wealth,  must  ultimately  beget  either  the  despotism 
of  organized  tyranny  or  the  worse  despotism  of  anarchy. 

To  turn  a  republican  government  into  a  despotism  the 
basest  and  most  brutal,  it  is  not  necessary  formally  to 
change  its  constitution  or  abandon  popular  elections.  It 
was  centuries  after  Casar  before  the  absolute  master  of  the 
Eoraan  world  pretended  to  rule  other  than  by  authority 
of  a  Senate  that  trembled  before  him. 

But  forms  are  nothing  when  substance  has  gone,  and 
the  forms  of  popular  government  are  those  from  which 
the  substance  of  freedom  may  most  easily  go.  Extremes 
meet,  and  a  government  of  universal  suffrage  and  theo- 
retical equality  may,  under  conditions  which  impel  the 
change,  most  readily  become  a  despotism.  For  there 
despotism  advances  in  the  name  and  with  the  might 
of  the  people.  The  single  source  of  power  once  secured, 
everything  is  secured.  There  is  no  unfranchised  class 
to  whom  appeal  may  be  made,  no  privileged  orders  who 


528  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN   TROGRESS.  Book  X. 

in  defending  their  own  rights  may  defend  those  of 
all.  No  bulwark  remains  to  stay  the  flood>  no  eminence 
to  rise  above  it.  They  wore  belted  barons  led  by  a  mitored 
archbishop  who  curbed  tlie  riantagonot  with  Magna 
Cbarta;  it  was  the  middle  classes  who  broke  the  pride  of 
the  Stuarts;  but  a  mere  aristocracy  of  wealth  will  never 
struggle  while  it  can  hope  to  bribe  a  tyrant. 

And  when  the  disparity  of  condition  increases,  so  docs 
universal  suffrage  make  it  easy  to  seize  the  source  of  power, 
for  the  greater  is  the  proportion  of  power  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  feel  no  direct  interest  in  the  conduct  of 
government;  who,  tortured  by  want  and  embrutod  by 
poverty,  are  ready  to  sell  their  votes  to  the  highest  bid- 
der or  follow  the  lead  of  the  most  blatant  demagogue;  or 
who,  made  bitter  by  hardships,  may  even  look  upon  prof- 
ligate and  tyrannous  government  with  the  satisfaction 
we  may  imagine  the  proletarians  and  slaves  of  Rome  to 
have  felt,  as  they  saw  a  Caligula  or  Nero  raging  among 
the  rich  patricians.  Given  a  community  with  republican 
institutions,  in  which  one  class  is  too  rich  to  be  shorn  of 
its  luxuries,  no  matter  how  public  affairs  are  adminis- 
tered, and  another  so  poor  that  a  few  dollars  on  election 
day  will  seem  more  than  any  abstract  consideration;  in 
which  the  few  roll  in  wealth  and  the  many  seethe  with 
discontent  at  a  condition  of  things  they  know  not  how 
to  remedy,  and  power  must  pass  into  the  hands  of  job- 
bers who  will  buy  and  sell  it  as  the  Prwtorians  sold  the 
Roman  purple,  or  into  the  hands  of  demagogues  who 
will  seize  and  wield  it  for  a  time,  only  to  be  displaced  by 
worse  demagogues. 

Where  there  is  anything  like  an  equal  distribution  of 
wealth — that  is  to  say,  where  there  is  general  patriotism, 
virtue,  and  intelligence — the  more  democratic  the  gov- 
ernment the  better  it  will  be;  but  where  there  is  gross 
inequality  in  the  distribution  of  wealth,  the  more  demo- 
cratic the  government  the  worse  it  will  be;  for,  while 


Chap.  IV.   HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION  MAY  DECLINE.      529 

rotten  democracy  may  not  in  itself  be  worse  than  rotten 
autocracy,  its  effects  npon  national  character  will  be 
worse.  To  give  the  suffrage  to  tramps,  to  paupers,  to 
men  to  whom  the  chance  to  labor  is  a  boon,  to  men  who 
must  beg,  or  steal,  or  starve,  is  to  invoke  destruction. 
To  put  political  power  in  the  hands  of  men  embittered 
and  degraded  by  poverty  is  to  tie  firebrands  to  foxes  and 
turn  them  loose  amid  the  standing  corn;  it  is  to  put  out 
the  eyes  of  a  Samson  and  to  twine  his  arms  around  the 
pillars  of  national  life. 

Even  the  accidents  of  hereditary  succession  or  of  selec- 
tion by  lot,  the  plan  of  some  of  the  ancient  republics, 
may  sometimes  place  the  wise  and  just  in  power;  but  in 
a  corrupt  democracy  the  tendency  is  always  to  give  power 
to  the  worst.  Honesty  and  patriotism  are  weighted,  and 
unscrupulousness  commands  success.  The  best  gravitate 
to  the  bottom,  the  worst  float  to  the  top,  and  the  vile  will 
only  be  ousted  by  the  viler.  While  as  national  character 
must  gradually  assimilate  to  the  qualities  that  win  power, 
and  consequently  respect,  that  demoralization  of  opinion 
goes  on  which  in  the  long  panorama  of  history  we  may 
see  over  and  over  again  transmuting  races  of  freemen 
into  races  of  slaves. 

As  in  England  in  the  last  century,  when  Parliament 
was  but  a  close  corporation  of  the  aristocracy,  a  corrupt 
oligarchy  clearly  fenced  off  from  the  masses  may  exist 
without  much  effect  on  national  character,  because  in 
that  case  power  is  associated  in  the  popular  mind  with 
other  things  than  corruption.  But  where  there  are  no 
hereditary  distinctions,  and  men  are  habitually  seen  to 
raise  themselves  by  corrupt  qualities  from  the  lowest 
places  to  wealth  and  power,  tolerance  of  these  qualities 
finally  becomes  admiration.  A  corrupt  democratic  gov- 
ernment must  finally  corrupt  the  people,  and  when  a 
people  become  corrupt  there  is  no  resurrection.  The 
life  is  gone,  only  the  carcass  remains;  and  it  is  left  but 
for  the  plowshares  of  fate  to  bury  it  out  of  sight. 


630  THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN   PEOGRESS.  Boole  X. 

Now  this  tranformation  of  popular  government  into 
despotism  of  the  vilest  and  most  degrading  kind,  which 
must  inevitably  result  from  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth,  is  not  a  thing  of  the  far  future.  It  has  already 
begun  in  the  United  States,  and  is  rapidly  going  on 
under  our  eyes.  That  our  legislative  bodies  are  steadily 
deteriorating  in  standard;  that  men  of  the  highest  abil- 
ity and  character  are  compelled  to  eschew  politics,  and 
the  arts  of  the  jobber  count  for  more  than  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  statesman;  that  voting  is  done  more  reck- 
lessly and  the  power  of  money  is  increasing;  that  it  is 
harder  to  arouse  the  people  to  the  necessity  of  reforms 
and  more  diflScult  to  carry  them  out;  that  political  diifer- 
ences  are  ceasing  to  be  differences  of  principle,  and 
abstract  ideas  are  losing  their  power;  that  parties  are 
passing  into  the  control  of  what  in  general  government 
would  be  oligarchies  and  dictatorships;  are  all  evidences 
of  political  decline. 

The  type  of  modern  growth  is  the  great  city.  Here 
are  to  be  found  the  greatest  wealth  and  the  deepest  pov- 
erty. And  it  is  here  that  popular  government  has  most 
clearly  broken  down.  In  all  the  great  American  cities 
there  is  to-day  as  clearly  defined  a  ruling  class  as  in  the 
most  aristocratic  'countries  of  the  world.  Its  members 
carry  wards  in  their  pockets,  make  up  the  slates  for 
nominating  conventions,  distribute  ofiSces  as  they  bar- 
gain together,  and — though  they  toil  not,  neither  do 
they  spin — wear  the  best  of  raiment  and  spend  money 
lavishly.  They  are  men  of  power,  whose  favor  the  ambi- 
tious must  court  and  whose  vengeance  he  must  avoid. 
Who  are  these  men?  The  wise,  the  good,  the  learned — 
men  who  have  earned  the  confidence  of  their  fellow- 
citizens  by  the  purity  of  their  lives,  the  splendor  of  their 
talents,  their  probity  in  public  trusts,  their  deep  study 
of  the  problems  of  government?  No;  they  are  gamblers, 
saloon  keepers,  pugilists,  or  worse,   who  have  made  a 


Chap.  IV.  HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION  MAY  DECLIITE.      531 

trade  of  controlling  votes  and  of  buying  and  selling 
oflBces  and  official  acts.  They  stand  to  the  government 
of  these  cities  as  the  Praetorian  Guards  did  to  that  of 
declining  Kome.  He  who  would  wear  the  purple,  fill 
the  curule  chair,  or  have  the  fasces  carried  before  him, 
must  go  or  send  his  messengers  to  their  camps,  give  them 
donatives  and  make  them  promises.  It  is  through  these 
men  that  the  rich  corporations  and  powerful  pecuniary 
interests  can  pack  the  Senate  and  the  bench  with  their 
creatures.  It  is  these  men  who  make  School  Directors, 
Supervisors,  Assessors,  members  of  the  Legislature,  Con- 
gressmen. Why,  there  are  many  election  districts  in 
the  United  States  in  which  a  George  "Washington,  a  Ben- 
jamin Franklin  or  a  Thomas  Jefferson  could  no  more  go 
to  the  lower  house  of  a  State  Legislature  than  under  the 
Ancient  Regime  a  base-born  peasant  could  become  a 
Marshal  of  France.  Their  very  character  would  be  an 
insuperable  disqualification. 

In  theory  we  are  intense  democrats.  The  proposal  to 
sacrifice  swine  in  the  temple  would  hardly  have  excited 
greater  horror  and  indignation  in  Jerusalem  of  old  than 
would  among  us  that  of  conferring  a  distinction  of  rank 
upon  our  most  eminent  citizen.  But  is  there  not  grow- 
ing up  among  us  a  class  who  have  all  the  power  without 
any  of  the  virtues  of  aristocracy?  We  have  simple  citi- 
zens who  control  thousands  of  miles  of  railroad,  millions 
of  acres  of  land,  the  means  of  livelihood  of  great  numbers 
of  men;  who  name  the  Governors  of  sovereign  States  as 
they  name  their  clerks,  choose  Senators  as  they  choose 
attorneys,  and  whose  will  is  as  supreme  with  Legislatures 
as  that  of  a  French  King  sitting  in  bed  of  justice.  The 
undercurrents  of  the  times  seem  to  sweep  us  back  again 
to  the  old  conditions  from  which  we  dreamed  we  had 
escaped.  The  development  of  the  artisan  and  commer- 
cial classes  gradually  broke  down  feudalism  after  it  had 
become   so  complete   that  men  thought   of  heaven  as 


533  THB  LAW  O?  HOCAIf  PSOGBESS.  Book  I. 

arganized  on  a  feudal  basis,  and  ranked  the  first  and 

■eeond  persons  of  the  Trinity  as  suzerain  and  tenant-in- 
chief.  Bnt  now  the  development  of  manufactnres  and 
exchange,  acting  in  a  social  organization  in  which  land 
is  made  private  property,  threatens  to  compel  every 
worker  to  seek  a  master,  as  the  insecurity  which  followed 
the  final  break-np  of  the  Boman  Empire  compelled  every 
freeman  to  seek  a  lord.  Nothing  seems  exempt  from 
this  tfflidency.  Industry  everywhere  tends  to  assume  a 
form  in  which  one  is  master  and  many  serve.  And  when 
one  is  master  and  the  others  serve,  the  one  will  control 
the  others,  even  in  such  matters  as  votes.  Just  as  the 
English  landlord  votes  his  tenants,  so  does  the  Xew 
England  mill  owner  vote  his  operatives. 

There  is  no  mistaking  it — the  very  foundations  of 
society  are  being  sapped  before  our  eyes,  while  we  ask, 
kow  is  it  possible  that  such  a  civilization  as  this,  with  its 
railroads,  and  daily  newspapers,  and  electric  telegraphs, 
should  ever  be  destroyed?  While  literature  breathes  but 
the  belief  that  we  have  been,  are,  and  for  the  future 
must  be,  leaving  the  savage  state  further  and  further 
behind  us,  there  are  indications  that  we  are  actually 
turning  back  again  toward  barbarism.  Let  me  illus- 
trate: One  of  the  characteristics  of  barbarism  is  the  low 
regard  for  the  rights  of  person  and  of  property.  That 
the  laws  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors  imposed  as  penalty 
for  murder  a  fine  proportioned  to  the  rank  of  the  victim, 
whUe  our  law  knows  no  distinction  of  rank,  and  protects 
the  lowest  from  the  highest,  the  poorest  from  the  richest, 
by  the  uniform  penalty  of  death,  is  looked  upon  as  evi- 
dence of  their  barbarism  and  our  civilization.  And  so, 
that  piracy,  and  robbery,  and  slave-trading,  and  black- 
mailing, were  once  regarded  as  legitimate  occupations, 
is  conclusive  proof  of  the  rude  state  of  development  from 
which  we  have  so  far  progressed. 

Bat  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that,  in  spite  of  oar  laws,  any 


auip.lV.  HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION  MAT  DECLINE.      533 

one  who  has  money  enough  and  wants  to  kill  another 
may  go  into  any  one  of  our  great  centers  of  population 
and  business,  and  gratify  his  desire,  and  then  surrender 
himself  to  justice,  with  the  chances  as  a  hundred  to  one 
that  he  will  suffer  no  greater  penalty  than  a  temporary 
imprisonment  and  the  loss  of  a  sum  proportioned  partly 
to  his  own  wealth  and  partly  to  the  wealth  and  standing 
of  the  man  he  kills.  His  money  will  be  paid,  not  to  the 
family  of  the  murdered  man,  who  have  lost  their  protec- 
tor; not  to  the  state,  which  has  lost  a  citizen;  but  to 
hiwyers  who  understand  how  to  secure  delays,  to  find 
witnesses,  and  get  juries  to  disagree. 

And  so,  if  a  man  steal  enough,  he  may  be  sure  that  his 
punishment  will  practically  amount  but  to  the  loss  of  a 
part  of  the  proceeds  of  his  theft;  and  if  he  steal  enough 
to  get  off  with  a  fortune,  he  will  be  greeted  by  his  ac- 
quaintances as  a  viking  might  have  been  greeted  after  a 
successful  cruise.  Even  though  he  robbed  those  who 
trusted  him;  even  though  he  robbed  the  widow  and  the 
fatherless;  he  has  only  to  get  enough,  and  he  may  safely 
flaunt  his  wealth  in  the  eyes  of  day. 

Now,  the  tendency  in  this  direction  is  an  increasing 
one.  It  is  shown  in  greatest  force  where  the  inequalities 
in  the  distribution  oi  wealth  are  greatest,  and  it  shows 
itself  as  they  increase.  If  it  be  not  a  return  to  barbar- 
ism, what  is  it?  The  failures  of  justice  to  which  I  have 
alluded  are  only  illustrative  of  the  increasing  debility 
of  our  legal  machinery  in  every  department.  It  is 
becoming  common  to  hoar  men  say  that  it  would  bo 
better  to  revert  to  first  principles  and  abolish  law,  for 
then  in  self-defense  the  people  would  form  Vigilance 
Committees  and  take  justice  into  their  own  hands.  Is 
this  indicative  of  advance  or  retrogression? 

All  this  is  matter  of  common  observation.  Though 
wo  may  not  speak  it  openly,  the  general  faith  in  repub- 
lican institutions  is,  where  they  have  reached  their  fullest 


634  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAIT  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

development,  narrowing  and  weakening.  It  is  no  longer 
that  confident  belief  in  republicanism  as  the  source  of 
national  blessings  that  it  once  was.  Thoughtful  men 
are  beginning  to  see  its  dangers,  without  seeing  how  to 
escape  them;  are  beginning  to  accept  the  view  of  Macau- 
lay  and  distrust  that  of  Jefferson.*  And  the  people  at 
large  are  becoming  used  to  the  growing  corruption.  The 
most  ominous  political  sign  in  the  United  States  to-day 
is  the  growth  of  a  sentiment  which  either  doubts  the 
existence  of  an  honest  man  in  public  office  or  looks  on 
him  as  a  fool  for  not  seizing  his  opportunities.  That  is 
to  say,  the  people  themselves  are  becoming  corrupted. 
Thus  in  the  United  States  to-day  is  republican  govern- 
ment running  the  course  it  must  inevitably  follow  under 
conditions  which  cause  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth. 

Where  that  course  leads  is  clear  to  whoever  will  think. 
As  corruption  becomes  chronic;  as  public  spirit  is  lost; 
as  traditions  of  honor,  virtue,  and  patriotism  are  weak- 
ened; as  law  is  brought  into  contempt  and  reforms 
become  hopeless;  then  in  the  festering  mass  will  be  gen- 
erated volcanic  forces,  ^hich  shatter  and  rend  when 
seeming  accident  gives  them  vent.  Strong,  unscrupulous 
men,  rising  up  upon  occasion,  will  become  the  exponents 
of  blind  popular  desires  or  fierce  popular  passions,  and 
dash  aside  forms  that  have  lost  their  vitality.  The  sword 
will  again  be  mightier  than  the  pen,  and  in  carnivals  of 
destruction  brute  force  and  wild  frenzy  will  alternate 
with  the  lethargy  of  a  declining  civilization. 

I  speak  of  the  United  States  only  because  the  United 
States  is  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  great  nations. 
What  shall  we  say  of  Europe,  where  dams  of  ancient  law 
and  custom  pen  up  the  swelling  waters  and  standing 
armies  weigh  down  the  safety  valves,  though  year  by 

*  See  Macaulay's  letter  to  Randall,  the  biographer  of  JeJfferson. 


Chap.  IV.   HOW  MODERN   CIVILIZATION  MAY  DECLINE.      535 

year  the  6res  grow  hotter  underneath?  Europe  tends  to 
republicanism  under  conditions  that  will  not  admit  of 
true  republicanism — under  conditions  that  substitute  for 
the  calm  and  august  figure  of  Liberty  the  petroleuse  and 
the  guillotine! 

Whence  shall  come  the  new  barbarians?    Go  through 
the  squalid  quarters  of  great  cities,  and  you  may  see, 
even  now,  their  gathering  hordes!    How  shall  learning   j  -rtq^f, 
perish  ?    Men  will  cease  to  read,  and  books  will  kindle  ^^ 

fires  and  be  turned  into  cartridges!  ^"^^ 

It  is  startling  to  think  how  slight  the  traces  that  would 
be  left  of  our  civilization  did  it  pass  through  the  throes 
which  have  accompanied  the  decline  of  every  previous 
civilization.  Paper  will  not  last  like  parchment,  nor  are 
our  most  massive  buildings  and  monuments  to  be  com- 
pared in  solidity  with  the  rock-hewn  temples  and  titanic 
edifices  of  the  old  civilizations.*  And  invention  has 
given  us,  not  merely  the  steam  engine  and  the  printing 
press,  but  petroleum,  nitro-glycerine,  and  dynamite. 

Yet  to  hint,  to-day,  that  our  civilization  may  possibly 
be  tending  to  decline,  seems  like  the  wildness  of  pessi- 
mism. The  special  tendencies  to  which  I  have  alluded  are 
obvious  to  thinking  men,  but  with  the  majority  of  think- 
ing men,  as  with  the  great  masses,  the  belief  in  substan- 
tial progress  is  yet  deep  and  strong — a  fundamental  belief 
which  admits  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 

But  any  one  who  will  think  over  the  matter  will  see 
that  this  must  necessarily  be  the  case  where  advance 
gradually  passes  into  retrogression.  For  in  social  devel- 
opment, as  in  everything  else,  motion  tends  to  persist  in 
straight  lines,  and  therefore,  where  there    has  been  a 

*  It  is  also,  it  seems  to  me,  instructive  to  note  how  inadequate  and 
utterly  misleading  would  be  the  idea  of  our  civilization  which  could 
be  gained  from  the  religious  and  funereal  monuments  of  our  time, 
which  are  all  we  have  from  which  to  gain  our  ideas  of  the  buried 
civilizations. 


636  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN"  PROGRESS.  Booh  X. 

previous  advance,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  recognize 
decline,  even  when  it  has  fully  commenced;  there  is  an 
almost  irresistible  tendency  to  believe  that  the  forward 
movement  which  has  been  advance,  and  is  still  going  on, 
is  still  advance.  The  web  of  beliefs,  customs,  laws, 
institutions,  and  habits  of  thought,  which  each  commu- 
nity is  constantly  spinning,  and  which  produces  in  the 
individual  environed  by  it  all  the  differences  of  national 
character,  is  never  unraveled.  That  is  to  say,  in  the  de- 
cline of  civilization,  communities  do  not  go  down  by  the 
same  paths  that  they  came  up.  For  instance,  the  decline 
of  civilization  as  manifested  in  government  would  not 
take  us  back  from  republicanism  to  constitutional  mon- 
archy, and  thence  to  the  feudal  system;  it  would  take  us 
to  imperatorship  and  anarchy.  As  manifested  in  reli- 
gion, it  would  not  take  us  back  into  the  faiths  of  our  fore- 
fathers, into  Protestantism  or  Catholicity,  but  into  new 
forms  of  superstition,  of  which  possibly  Mormonism  and 
other  even  grosser  "isms"  may  give  some  vague  idea. 
As  manifested  in  knowledge,  it  would  not  take  us  toward 
Bacon,  but  toward  the  literati  of  China. 

And  how  the  retrogression  of  civilization,  following  a 
period  of  advance,  may  be  so  gradual  as  to  attract  no 
attention  at  the  time;  nay,  how  that  decline  must  neces- 
sarily, by  the  great  majority  of  men,  be  mistaken  for 
advance,  is  easily  seen.  For  instance,  there  is  an  enor- 
mous difference  between  Grecian  art  of  the  classic  period 
and  that  of  the  lower  empire;  yet  the  change  was  accom- 
panied, or  rather  caused,  by  a  change  of  taste.  The 
artists  who  most  quickly  followed  this  change  of  taste 
were  in  their  day  regarded  as  the  superior  artists.  And 
so  of  literature.  As  it  became  more  vapid,  puerile,  and 
stilted,  it  would  be  in  obedience  to  an  altered  taste, 
which  would  regard  its  increasing  weakness  as  increasing 
strength  and  beauty.  The  really  good  writer  would  not 
find  readers;  he  would  be  regarded  as  rude,  dry,  or  dull. 


Chap.  IV.  HOW  MODERN  CIVILIZATION  MAY  DECLINE.      537 

And  80  would  the  drama  decline;  not  because  there  was 
a  lack  of  good  plays,  but  because  the  prevailing  taste  be- 
came more  and  more  that  of  a  less  cultured  class,  who, 
of  course,  regard  that  which  they  most  admire  as  the 
best  of  its  kind.  And  so,  too,  of  religion;  the  supersti- 
tions which  a  superstitious  people  will  add  to  it  will  be 
regarded  by  them  as  improvements.  While,  as  the  de- 
cline goes  on,  the  return  to  barbarism,  where  it  is  not  in 
itself  regarded  as  an  advance,  will  seem  necessary  to  meet 
the  exigencies  of  the  times. 

For  instance,  flogging,  as  a  punishment  for  certain 
offenses,  has  been  recently  restored  to  the  penal  code  of 
England,  and  has  been  strongly  advocated  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic.  I  express  no  opinion  as  to  whether  this 
is  or  is  not  a  better  punishment  for  crime  than  imprison- 
ment. I  only  point  to  the  fact  as  illustrating  how  an 
increasing  amount  of  crime  and  an  increasing  embarrass- 
ment as  to  the  maintenance  of  prisoners,  both  obvious 
tendencies  at  present,  might  lead  to  a  fuller  return  to 
the  physical  cruelty  of  barbarous  codes.  The  use  of  tor- 
ture in  judicial  investigations,  which  steadily  grew  with 
the  decline  of  Eoman  civilization,  it  is  thus  easy  to  see, 
might,  as  manners  brutalized  and  crime  increased,  be 
demanded  as  a  necessary  improvement  of  the  criminal 
law. 

Whether  in  the  present  drifts  of  opinion  and  taste 
there  are  as  yet  any  indications  of  retrogression,  it  is  not 
necessary  to  inquire;  but  there  are  many  things  about 
which  there  can  be  no  dispute,  which  go  to  show  that 
our  civilization  has  reached  a  critical  period,  and  that 
unless  a  new  start  is  made  in  the  direction  of  social  equal- 
ity, the  nineteenth  century  may  to  the  future  mark  its 
climax.  These  industrial  depressions,  which  cause  as 
much  waste  and  suffering  as  famines  or  wars,  are  like 
the  twinges  and  shocks  which  precede  paralysis.  Every- 
where is  it  evident  that  the  tendency  to  inequality,  which 


638  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

is  the  necessary  result  of  material  progress  where  land  is 
monopolized,  cannot  go  much  further  without  carrying 
our  civilization  into  that  downward  path  which  is  so  easy 
to  enter  and  so  hard  to  abandon.  Everywhere  the  in- 
creasing intensity  of  the  struggle  to  live,  the  increasing 
necessity  for  straining  every  nerve  to  prevent  being 
thrown  down  and  trodden  under  foot  in  the  scramble  for 
wealth,  is  draining  the  forces  which  gain  and  maintain  im- 
provements. In  every  civilized  country  pauperism,  crime, 
insanity,  and  suicides  are  increasing.  In  every  civilized 
country  the  diseases  are  increasing  which  come  from 
overstrained  nerves,  from  insufficient  nourishment,  from 
squalid  lodgings,  from  unwholesome  and  monotonous 
occupations,  from  premature  labor  of  children,  from  the 
tasks  and  crimes  which  poverty  imposes  upon  women. 
In  every  highly  civilized  country  the  expectation  of  life, 
which  gradually  rose  for  several  centuries,  and  which 
seems  to  have  culminated  about  the  first  quarter  of  this 
century,  appears  to  be  now  diminishing.* 

It  is  not  an  advancing  civilization  that  such  figures 
show.  It  is  a  civilization  which  in  its  undercurrents  has 
already  begun  to  recede.  When  the  tide  turns  in  bay  or 
river  from  flood  to  ebb,  it  is  not  all  at  once;  but  here  it 
still  runs  on,  though  there  it  has  begun  to  recede.  When 
the  sun  passes  the  meridian,  it  can  be  told  only  by  the 
way  the  short  shadows  fall;  for  the  heat  of  the  day  yet 
increases.  But  as  sure  as  the  turning  tide  must  soon  run 
full  ebb;  as  sure  as  the  declining  sun  must  bring  dark- 
ness, so  sure  is  it,  that  though  knowledge  yet  increases 
and  invention  marches  on,  and  new  states  are  being  set- 
tled, and  cities  still  expand,  yet  civilization  has  begun  to 

*  Statistics  which  show  these  things  are  collected  in  convenient 
form  in  a  volume  entitled  "  Deterioration  and  Race  Education,"  by 
Samuel  Royce,  which  has  been  largely  distributed  by  the  venerable 
Peter  Cooper  of  New  York.  Strangely  enough,  the  only  remedy 
proposed  by  Mr.  Royce  is  the  establishment  of  Kindergarten  schools. 


Chap.  IV.   HOW  MODERJT  CIVILIZATION  MAY   DECLINE.      539 

wane  when,  in  proportion  to  population,  we  must  build 
more  and  more  prisons,  more  and  more  almshouses,  more 
and  more  insane  asylums.  It  is  not  from  top  to  bottom 
that  societies  die;  it  is  from  bottom  to  top. 

But  there  are  evidences  far  more  palpable  than  any 
that  can  be  given  by  statistics,  of  tendencies  to  the  ebb 
of  civilization.  There  is  a  vague  but  general  feeling  of 
disappointment;  an  increased  bitterness  among  the 
working  classes;  a  widespread  feeling  of  unrest  and 
brooding  revolution.  If  this  were  accompanied  by  a 
definite  idea  of  how  relief  is  to  be  obtained,  it  would  be 
a  hopeful  sign;  but  it  is  not.  Though  the  schoolmaster 
has  been  abroad  some  time,  the  general  power  of  tracing 
effect  to  cause  does  not  seem  a  whit  improved.  The 
reaction  toward  protectionism,  as  the  reaction  toward 
other  exploded  fallacies  of  government,  shows  this.* 
And  even  the  philosophic  free-thinker  cannot  look  upon 
that  vast  change  in  religious  ideas  that  is  now  sweeping 
over  the  civilized  world  without  feeling  that  this  tre- 
mendous fact  may  have  most  momentous  relations,  which 
only  the  future  can  develop.  For  what  is  going  on  is 
not  a  change  in  the  form  of  religion,  but  the  negation 
and  destruction  of  the  ideas  from  which  religion  springs. 
Christianity  is  not  simply  clearing  itself  of  superstitions, 
but  in  the  popular  mind  it  is  dying  at  the  root,  as  the 
old  paganisms  were  dying  when  Christianity  entered  the 
world.  And  nothing  arises  to  take  its  place.  The  fun- 
damental ideas  of  an  intelligent  Creator  and  of  a  future 
life  are  in  the  general  mind  rapidly  weakening.  Now, 
whether  this  may  or  may  not  be  in  itself  an  advance,  the 
importance  of  the  part  which  religion  has  played  in  the 

*  In  point  of  constructive  statesmanship — the  recognition  of  fun- 
damental principles  and  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States,  adopted  a  century  ago,  is  greatly  superior 
to  the  latest  State  Constitutions,  the  most  recent  of  which  is  that  of 
California — a  piece  of  utter  botchwork. 


540  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  Z. 

world's  history  shows  the  importance  of  the  change  that 
is  now  going  on.  Unless  human  nature  has  suddenly 
altered  in  what  the  universal  history  of  the  race  shows 
to  be  its  deepest  characteristics,  the  mightiest  actions  and 
reactions  are  thus  preparing.  Such  stages  of  thought 
have  heretofore  always  marked  periods  of  transition.  On 
a  smaller  scale  and  to  a  less  depth  (for  I  think  any  one 
who  will  notice  the  drift  of  our  literature,  and  talk  upon 
such  subjects  with  the  men  he  meets,  will  see  that  it  is 
sub-soil  and  not  surface  plowing  that  materialistic  ideas 
are  now  doing),  such  a  state  of  thought  preceded  the 
French  revolution.  But  the  closest  parallel  to  the  wreck 
of  religious  ideas  now  going  on  is  to  be  found  in  that 
period  in  which  ancient  civilization  began  to  pass  from 
splendor  to  decline.  What  change  may  come,  no  mortal 
man  can  tell,  but  that  some  great  change  must  come, 
thoughtful  men  begin  to  feel.  The  civilized  world  is 
trembling  on  the  verge  of  a  great  movement.  Either 
it  must  be  a  leap  upward,  which  will  open  the  way  to 
advances  yet  undreamed  of,  or  it  must  be  a  plunge 
downward,  which  will  carry  us  back  toward  barbarism. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  CENTRAL  TEUTH. 

In  the  short  space  to  which  this  latter  part  of  our 
inquiry  is  necessarily  confined,  I  have  been  obliged  to 
omit  much  that  I  would  like  to  say,  and  to  touch  briefly 
where  an  exhaustive  consideration  would  not  be  out  of 
place. 

Nevertheless,  this,  at  least,  is  evident,  that  the  truth 
to  which  we  were  led  in  the  politico-economic  branch  of 
our  inquiry  is  as  clearly  apparent  in  the  rise  and  fall 
of  nations  and  the  growth  and  decay  of  civilizations,  and 
that  it  accords  with  those  deep-seated  recognitions  of 
relation  and  sequence  that  we  denominate  moral  percep- 
tions. Thus  have  been  given  to  our  conclusions  the 
greatest  certitude  and  highest  sanction. 

This  truth  involves  both  a  menace  and  a  promise.  It 
shows  that  the  evils  arising  from  the  unjust  and  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth,  which  are  becoming  more  and 
more  apparent  as  modern  civilization  goes  on,  are  not 
incidents  of  progress,  but  tendencies  which  must  bring 
progress  to  a  halt;  that  they  will  not  cure  themselves, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  must,  unless  their  cause  is  removed, 
grow  greater  and  greater,  until  they  sweep  us  back  into 
barbarism  by  the  road  every  previous  civilization  has 
trod.  But  it  also  shows  that  these  evils  are  not  imposed 
by  natural  laws;  that  they  spring  solely  from  social  mal- 
adjustments which  ignore  natural  laws,  and  that  in 
removing  their  cause  we  shall  be  giving  an  enormous 
impetus  to  progress. 

The  poverty  which  in  the  midst  of  abundance  pinches 


>- 


542  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS.  Book  X. 

and  imbrutes  men,  and  all  the  manifold  evils  which  flow 
from  it,  spring  from  a  denial  of  justice.  In  permitting 
the  monopolization  of  the  opportunities  which  nature 
freely  offers  to  all,  we  have  ignored  the  fundamental 
law  of  justice — for,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  when  we 
view  things  upon  a  large  scale,  justice  seems  to  be  the 
supreme  law  of  the  universe.  But  by  sweeping  away 
this  injustice  and  asserting  the  rights  of  all  men  to 
natural  opportunities,  we  shall  conform  ourselves  to  the 
law — we  shall  remove  the  great  cause  of  unnatural  in- 
equality in  the  distribution  of  wealth  and  power;  we 
shall  abolish  poverty;  tame  the  ruthless  passions  of 
greed;  dry  up  the  springs  of  vice  and  misery;  light  in 
dark  places  the  lamp  of  knowledge;  give  new  vigor  to 
invention  and  a  fresh  impulse  to  discovery;  substitute 
political  strength  for  political  weakness;  and  make 
tyranny  and  anarchy  impossible. 

The  reform  I  have  proposed  accords  with  all  that  is 
politically,  socially,  or  morally  desirable.  It  has  the 
qualities  of  a  true  reform,  for  it  will  make  all  other  re- 
forms easier.  What  is  it  but  the  carrying  out  in  letter 
and  spirit  of  the  truth  enunciated  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence — the  "self-evident"  truth  that  is  the  heart 
and  soul  of  the  Declaration — "That  all  men  are  created 
equal;  that  they  are  endowed  hy  their  Creator  with  certain 
unalienable  rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness!'^ 

These  rights  are  denied  when  the  equal  right  to  land 
—on  which  and  by  which  men  alone  can  live — is  denied. 
Equality  of  political  rights  will  not  compensate  for  the 
denial  of  the  equal  right  to  the  bounty  of  nature.  Polit- 
ical liberty,  when  the  equal  right  to  land  is  denied, 
becomes,  as  population  increases  and  invention  goes  on, 
merely  the  liberty  to  compete  for  employment  at  starva- 
tion wages.  This  is  the  truth  that  we  have  ignored. 
And  so  there  come  beggars  in  our  streets  and  tramps  on 


CkoP-  ^'  THE  CENTRAL  TRUTH.  543 

our  roads;  and  poverty  enslaves  men  whom  we  boast  are 
political  sovereigns;  and  want  breeds  ignorance  that  our 
schools  cannot  enlighten;  and  citizens  vote  as  their  mas- 
ters dictate;  and  the  demagogue  usurps  the  part  of  the 
statesman;  and  gold  weighs  in  the  scales  of  justice;  and 
in  high  places  sit  those  who  do  not  pay  to  civic  virtue 
even  the  compliment  of  hypocrisy;  and  the  pillars  of 
the  republic  that  we  thought  so  strong  already  bend 
under  an  increasing  strain. 

We  honor  Liberty  in  name  and  in  form.  We  set  up 
her  statues  and  sound  her  praises.  But  we  have  not 
fully  trusted  her.  And  with  our  growth  so  grow  her 
demands.     She  will  have  no  half  service! 

Liberty!  it  is  a  word  to  conjure  with,  not  to  vex  the 
ear  in  empty  boastings.  For  Liberty  means  Justice,  and 
Justice  is  the  natural  law — the  law  of  health  and  symme- 
try and  strength,  of  fraternity  and  co-operation. 

They  who  look  upon  Liberty  as  having  accomplished 
her  mission  when  she  has  abolished  hereditary  privileges 
and  given  men  the  ballot,  who  think  of  her  as  having  no 
further  relations  to  the  everyday  afEairs  of  life,  have  not 
seen  her  real  grandeur — to  them  the  poets  who  have 
sung  of  her  must  seem  rhapsodists,  and  her  martyrs 
fools!  As  the  sun  is  the  lord  of  life,  as  well  as  of  light; 
as  his  beams  not  merely  pierce  the  clouds,  but  support 
all  growth,  supply  all  motion,  and  call  forth  from  what 
would  otherwise  be  a  cold  and  inert  mass  all  the  infinite 
diversities  of  being  and  beauty,  so  is  liberty  to  mankind. 
It  is  not  for  an  abstraction  that  men  have  toiled  and 
died;  that  in  every  age  the  witnesses  of  Liberty  have 
stood  forth,  and  the  martyrs  of  Liberty  have  suffered. 

We  speak  of  Liberty  as  one  thing,  and  of  virtue,  wealth, 
knowledge,  invention,  national  strength  and  national 
independence  as  other  things.  But,  of  all  these.  Liberty 
is  the  source,  the  mother,  the  necessary  condition.  She 
is  to  virtue  what  light  is  to  color;  to  wealth  what  sun- 


544  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PEOGEESS.  Book  X. 

Bliine  is  to  grain;  to  knowledge  what  eyes  are  to  sight. 
She  is  the  genius  of  invention,  the  brawn  of  national 
strength,  the  spirit  of  national  independence.  "Where 
Liberty  rises,  there  virtue  grows,  wealth  increases,  knowl- 
edge expands,  invention  multiplies  human  powers,  and 
in  strength  and  spirit  the  freer  nation  rises  among  her 
neighbors  as  Saul  amid  his  brethren — taller  and  fairer. 
Where  Liberty  sinks,  there  virtue  fades,  wealth  dimin- 
ishes, knowledge  is  forgotten,  invention  ceases,  and  em- 
pires once  mighty  in  arms  and  arts  become  a  helpless 
prey  to  freer  barbarians! 

Only  in  broken  gleams  and  partial  light  has  the  sun  of 
Liberty  yet  beamed  among  men,  but  all  progress  hath 
she  called  forth. 

Liberty  came  to  a  race  of  slaves  crouching  under  Egyp- 
tian whips,  and  led  them  forth  from  the  House  of  Bond- 
age. She  hardened  them  in  the  desert  and  made  of 
them  a  race  of  conquerors.  The  free  spirit  of  the  Mosaic 
law  took  their  thinkers  up  to  heights  where  they  beheld 
the  unity  of  God,  and  inspired  their  poets  with  strains 
that  yet  phrase  the  highest  exaltations  of  thought.  Lib- 
erty dawned  on  the  Phoenician  coast,  and  ships  passed  the 
Pillars  of  Hercules  to  plow  the  unknown  sea.  She  shed 
a  partial  light  on  Greece,  and  marble  grew  to  shapes  of 
ideal  beauty,  words  became  the  instruments  of  subtlest 
thought,  and  against  the  scanty  militia  of  free  cities  the 
countless  hosts  of  the  Great  King  broke  like  surges 
against  a  rock.  She  cast  her  beams  on  the  four-acre 
farms  of  Italian  husbandmen,  and  born  of  her  strength 
a  power  came  forth  that  conquered  the  world.  They 
glinted  from  shields  of  German  warriors,  and  Augustus 
wept  his  legions.  Out  of  the  night  that  followed  her 
eclipse,  her  slanting  rays  fell  again  on  free  cities,  and  a 
lost  learning  revived,  modern  civilization  began,  a  new 
world  was  unveiled;  and  as  Liberty  grew,  so  grew  art, 
wealth,  power,  knowledge,  and  refinement.     In  the  his- 


Chap.  V  THE   CEITTRAL  TBUTH.  545 

tory  of  every  nation  we  may  read  the  same  tmth.  It  was 
the  strength  born  of  Magna  Charta  that  won  Crecy  and 
Agincourt.  It  was  the  revival  of  Liberty  from  the 
despotism  of  the  Tudors  that  glorified  the  Elizabethan 
age.  It  was  the  spirit  that  brought  a  crowned  tyrant  to 
the  block  that  planted  here  the  seed  of  a  mighty  tree. 
It  was  the  energy  of  ancient  freedom  that,  the  moment 
it  had  gained  unity,  made  Spain  the  mightiest  power  of 
the  world,  only  to  fall  to  the  lowest  depth  of  weakness 
when  tyranny  succeeded  liberty.  See,  in  France,  all 
intellectual  vigor  dying  under  the  tyranny  of  the  Seven- 
teenth Century  to  revive  in  splendor  as  Liberty  awoke  in 
the  Eighteenth,  and  on  the  enfranchisement  of  French 
peasants  in  the  Great  Revolution,  basing  the  wonderful 
strength  that  has  in  our  time  defied  defeat. 

Shall  we  not  trust  her? 

In  our  time,  as  in  times  before,  creep  on  the  insidious 
forces  that,  producing  inequality,  destroy  Liberty.  On 
the  horizon  the  clouds  begin  to  lower.  Liberty  calls  to 
us  again.  We  must  follow  her  further;  we  must  trust 
her  fully.  Either  we  must  wholly  accept  her  or  she  will 
not  stay.  It  is  not  enough  that  men  should  vote;  it  is 
not  enough  that  they  should  be  theoretically  equal  be- 
fore the  law.  They  must  have  liberty  to  avail  themselves 
of  the  opportunities  and  means  of  life;  they  must  stand 
on  equal  terms  with  reference  to  the  bounty  of  nature. 
Either  this,  or  Liberty  withdraws  her  light!  Either  this, 
or  darkness  comes  on,  and  the  very  forces  that  progress 
has  evolved  turn  to  powers  that  work  destruction.  This 
is  the  universal  law.  This  is  the  lesson  of  the  centuries. 
Unless  its  foundations  be  laid  in  justice  the  social  struc- 
ture cannot  stand. 

Our  primary  social  adjustment  is  a  denial  of  justice. 
In  allowing  one  man  to  own  the  land  on  which  and  from 
which  other  men  must  live,  we  have  made  them  his 
bondsmen  in  a  degree  which  increases  as  material  prog- 


546  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROQKESS.  Book  X. 

ress  goes  on.  This  is  the  subtile  alchemy  that  in  ways 
they  do  not  realize  is  extracting  from  the  masses  in  every 
civilized  country  the  fruits  of  their  weary  toil;  that  is 
instituting  a  harder  and  more  hopeless  slavery  in  place 
of  that  which  has  been  destroyed;  that  is  bringing  polit- 
ical despotism  out  of  political  freedom,  and  must  soon 
transmute  democratic  institutions  into  anarchy. 

It  is  this  that  turns  the  blessings  of  material  progress 
into  a  curse.  It  is  this  that  crowds  human  beings  into 
noisome  cellars  and  squalid  tenement  houses;  that  fills 
prisons  and  brothels;  that  goads  men  with  want  and 
consumes  them  with  greed;  that  robs  women  of  the  grace 
and  beauty  of  perfect  womanhood;  that  takes  from  little 
children  the  joy  and  innocence  of  life's  morning. 

Civilization  so  based  cannot  continue.  The  eternal 
laws  of  the  universe  forbid  it.  Ruins  of  dead  empires 
testify,  and  the  witness  that  is  in  every  soul  answers, 
that  it  cannot  be.  It  is  something  grander  than  Benevo- 
lence, something  more  august  than  Charity — it  is  Justice 
herself  that  demands  of  us  to  right  this  wrong.  Justice 
that  will  not  be  denied;  that  cannot  be  put  off — Justice 
that  with  the  scales  carries  the  sword.  Shall  we  ward 
the  stroke  with  liturgies  and  prayers?  Shall  we  avert 
the  decrees  of  immutable  law  by  raising  churches  when 
hungry  infants  moan  and  weary  mothers  weep? 

Though  it  may  take  the  language  of  prayer,  it  is  blas- 
phemy that  attributes  to  the  inscrutable  decrees  of  Provi- 
dence the  suffering  and  brutishness  that  come  of  poverty; 
that  turns  with  folded  hands  to  the  All-Father  and  lays 
on  Him  the  responsibility  for  the  want  and  crime  of  our 
great  cities.  We  degrade  the  Everlasting.  We  slander 
the  Just  One.  A  merciful  man  would  have  better  ordered 
the  world;  a  just  man  would  crush  with  his  foot  such  an 
ulcerous  anthill!  It  is  not  the  Almighty,  but  we  who 
are  responsible  for  the  vice  and  misery  that  fester  amid 
our  civilization.     The  Creator  showers  upon  us  his  gifts 


amp.  V.  THE   CENTRAL  TRUTH.  547 

— more  than  enough  for  all.  But  like  swine  scrambling 
for  food,  we  tread  them  in  the  mire — tread  them  in  the 
mire,  while  we  tear  and  rend  each  other! 

In  the  very  centers  of  our  civilization  to-day  are  want 
and  suffering  enough  to  make  sick  at  heart  whoever  does 
not  close  his  eyes  and  steel  his  nerves.  Dare  we  turn  to 
the  Creator  and  ask  Him  to  relieve  it?  Supposing  the 
prayer  were  heard,  and  at  the  behest  with  which  the  uni- 
verse sprang  into  being  there  should  glow  in  the  sun  a 
greater  power;  new  virtue  fill  the  air;  fresh  vigor  the 
soil;  that  for  every  blade  of  grass  that  now  grows  two 
should  spring  up,  and  the  seed  that  now  increases  fifty- 
fold  should  increase  a  hundred-fold!  Would  poverty  be 
abated  or  want  relieved?  Manifestly  no!  Whatever 
benefit  would  accrue  would  be  but  temporary.  The  new 
powers  streaming  through  the  material  universe  could  be 
utilized  only  through  land.  And  land,  being  private 
property,  the  classes  that  now  monopolize  the  bounty  of 
the  Creator  would  monopolize  all  the  new  bounty.  Land 
owners  would  alone  be  benefited.  Eents  would  increase, 
but  wages  would  still  tend  to  the  starvation  point! 

This  is  not  merely  a  deduction  of  political  economy;  it 
is  a  fact  of  experience.  We  know  it  because  we  have 
seen  it.  Within  our  own  times,  under  our  very  eyes, 
that  Power  which  is  above  all,  and  in  all,  and  through 
all;  that  Power  of  which  the  whole  universe  is  but  the  mani- 
festation; that  Power  which  maketh  all  things,  and  with- 
out which  is  not  anything  made  that  is  made,  has  increased 
the  bounty  which  men  may  enjoy,  as  truly  as  though  the 
fertility  of  nature  had  been  increased.  Into  the  mind  of 
one  came  the  thought  that  harnessed  steam  for  the  serv- 
ice of  mankind.  To  the  inner  ear  of  another  was  whis- 
pered the  secret  that  compels  the  lightning  to  bear  a 
message  round  the  globe.  In  every  direction  have  the 
laws  of  matter  been  revealed;  in  every  department  of 
industry  have  arisen  arms  of  iron  and  fingers  of  steel. 


548  THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN   PROGRESS.  BoOc  X. 

whose  effect  upon  the  production  of  wealth  has  been  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  an  increase  in  the  fertility  of  nature. 
What  has  been  the  result?  Simply  that  land  owners  get 
all  the  gain.  The  wonderful  discoveries  and  inventions 
of  our  century  have  neither  increased  wages  nor  lightened 
toil.  The  effect  has  simply  been  to  make  the  few  richer; 
the  many  more  helpless! 

Can  it  be  that  the  gifts  of  the  Creator  may  be  thus 
misappropriated  with  impunity?  Is  it  a  light  thing  that 
labor  should  be  robbed  of  its  earnings  while  greed  rolls 
in  wealth — that  the  many  should  want  while  the  few  are 
surfeited?  Turn  to  history,  and  on  every  page  may  be 
read  the  lesson  that  such  wrong  never  goes  unpunished; 
that  the  Nemesis  that  follows  injustice  never  falters 
nor  sleeps!  Look  around  to-day.  Can  this  state  of 
things  continue?  May  we  even  say,  "After  us  the  del- 
uge!'* Nay;  the  pillars  of  the  state  are  trembling  even 
now,  and  the  very  foundations  of  society  begin  to  quiver 
with  pent-up  forces  that  glow  underneath.  The  struggle 
that  must  either  revivify,  or  convulse  in  ruin,  is  near  at 
hand,  if  it  be  not  already  begun. 

The  fiat  has  gone  forth!  With  steam  and  electricity, 
and  the  new  powers  born  of  progress,  forces  have  entered 
the  world  that  will  either  compel  us  to  a  higher  plane  or 
overwhelm  us,  as  nation  after  nation,  as  civilization  after 
civilization,  have  been  overwhelmed  before.  It  is  the 
delusion  which  precedes  destruction  that  sees  in  the 
popular  unrest  with  which  the  civilized  world  is  fever- 
ishly pulsing  only  the  passing  effect  of  ephemeral  causes. 
Between  democratic  ideas  and  the  aristocratic  adjust- 
ments of  society  there  is  an  irreconcilable  conflict.  Here 
in  the  United  States,  as  there  in  Europe,  it  may  be  seen 
arising.  We  cannot  go  on  permitting  men  to  vote  and 
forcing  them  to  tramp.  We  cannot  go  on  educating  boys 
and  girls  in  our  public  schools  and  then  refusing  them 
the  right  to  earn  an  honest  living.    We  cannot  go  on 


Chap.  V.  THE  CENTRAL  TRUTH.  549 

prating  of  the  inalienable  rights  of  man  and  then  deny- 
ing the  inalienable  right  to  the  bounty  of  the  Creator. 
Even  now,  in  old  bottles  the  new  wine  begins  to  ferment, 
and  elemental  forces  gather  for  the  strife! 

But  if,  while  there  is  yet  time,  we  turn  to  Justice  and 
obey  her,  if  we  trust  Liberty  and  follow  her,  the  dangers 
that  now  threaten  must  disappear,  the  forces  that  now 
menace  will  turn  to  agencies  of  elevation.  Think  of  the 
powers  now  wasted;  of  the  infinite  fields  of  knowledge 
yet  to  be  explored;  of  the  possibilities  of  which  the  won- 
drous inventions  of  this  century  give  us  but  a  hint. 
With  want  destroyed;  with  greed  changed  to  noble  pas- 
sions; with  the  fraternity  that  is  born  of  equality  taking 
the  place  of  the  jealousy  and  fear  that  now  array  men 
against  each  other;  with  mental  power  loosed  by  con- 
ditions that  give  to  the  humblest  comfort  and  leisure; 
and  who  shall  measure  the  heights  to  which  our  civiliza- 
tion may  soar?  Words  fail  the  thought!  It  is  the 
Golden  Age  of  which  poets  have  sung  and  high-raised 
seers  have  told  in  metaphor!  It  is  the  glorious  vision 
which  has  always  haunted  man  with  gleams  of  fitful 
splendor.  It  is  what  he  saw  whose  eyes  at  Patmos  were 
closed  in  a  trance.  It  is  the  culmination  of  Christianity; 
— the  City  of  God  on  earth,  with  its  walls  of  jasper  and 
its  gates  of  pearl!    It  is  the  reign  of  the  Prince  of  Peace! 


^    (jjiJ-^O^yM^L^n^A^ 


CONCLUSION. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE. 


The  days  of  the  nations  bear  no  trace 

Of  all  the  sunshine  so  far  foretold; 
The  cannon  speaks  in  the  teacher's  place — 

The  age  is  weary  with  work  and  gold, 
And  high  hopes  wither,  and  memories  wane; 

On  hearths  and  altars  the  fires  are  dead; 
But  that  brave  faith  hath  not  lived  in  vain — 

And  this  is  all  that  our  watcher  said. 

— Franca  Brown- 


CONCLUSION. 

THE  PBOBLEM  OF  INDIVIDUAL  LITE. 

My  task  is  done. 

Yet  the  thought  still  mounts.  The  problems  we  have 
been  considering  lead  into  a  problem  higher  and  deeper 
still.  Behind  the  problems  of  social  life  lies  the  problem 
of  individual  life.  I  have  found  it  impossible  to  think  of 
the  one  without  thinking  of  the  other,  and  so,  I  imagine, 
will  it  be  with  those  who,  reading  this  book,  go  with  me 
in  thought.  For,  as  says  Guizot,  ''when  the  history  of 
civilization  is  completed,  when  there  is  nothing  more  to 
say  as  to  our  present  existence,  man  inevitably  asks  him- 
self whether  all  is  exhausted,  whether  he  has  reached  the 
end  of  all  things?" 

This  problem  I  cannot  now  discuss.  I  speak  of  it  only 
because  the  thought  which,  while  writing  this  book,  has 
come  with  inexpressible  cheer  to  me,  may  also  be  of  cheer 
to  some  who  read  it;  for,  whatever  be  its  fate,  it  will  be 
read  by  some  who  in  their  heart  of  hearts  have  taken 
the  cross  of  a  new  crusade.  This  thought  will  come  to 
them  without  my  suggestion;  but  we  are  surer  that  we 
see  a  star  when  we  know  that  others  also  see  it. 

The  truth  that  I  have  tried  to  make  clear  will  not  find 
easy  acceptance.  If  that  could  be,  it  would  have  been 
accepted  long  ago.  If  that  could  be,  it  would  never  have 
been  obscured.  But  it  will  find  friends — those  who  will 
toil  for  it;  suffer  for  it;  if  need  be,  die  for  it.  This  is 
the  power  of  Truth. 

Will  it  at  length  prevail?    Ultimately,  yes.     But  in 


554  CONCLUSION". 

our  own  times,  or  in  times  of  which  any  memory  of  us 
remains,  who  shall  say? 

For  the  man  who,  seeing  the  want  and  misery,  the 
ignorance  and  brutishness  caused  by  unjust  social  insti- 
tutions, sets  himself,  in  so  far  as  he  has  strength,  to 
right  them,  there  is  disappointment  and  bitterness.  So 
it  has  been  of  old  time.  So  is  it  even  now.  But  the 
bitterest  thought — and  it  sometimes  comes  to  the  best 
and  bravest — is  that  of  the  hopelessness  of  the  effort,  the 
futility  of  the  sacrifice.  To  how  few  of  those  who  sow 
the  seed  is  it  given  to  see  it  grow,  or  even  with  certainty 
to  know  that  it  will  grow. 

Let  us  not  disguise  it.  Over  and  over  again  has  the 
standard  of  Truth  and  Justice  been  raised  in  this  world. 
Over  and  over  again  has  it  been  trampled  down — often- 
times in  blood.  If  they  are  weak  forces  that  are  opposed 
to  Truth,  how  should  Error  so  long  prevail?  If  Justice 
has  but  to  raise  her  head  to  have  Injustice  flee  before 
her,  how  should  the  wail  of  the  oppressed  so  long  go  up? 

But  for  those  who  see  Truth  and  would  follow  her;  for 
those  who  recognize  Justice  and  would  stand  for  her, 
success  is  not  the  only  thing.  Success!  Why,  False- 
hood has  often  that  to  give;  and  Injustice  often  has  that 
to  give.  Must  not  Truth  and  Justice  have  something  to 
give  that  is  their  own  by  proper  right — theirs  in  essence, 
and  not  by  accident? 

That  they  have,  and  that  here  and  now,  every  one  who 
has  felt  their  exaltation  knows.  But  sometimes  the 
clouds  sweep  down.  It  is  sad,  sad  reading,  the  lives  of 
the  men  who  would  have  done  something  for  their  fel- 
lows. To  Socrates  they  gave  the  hemlock;  Gracchus 
they  killed  with  sticks  and  stones;  and  One,  greatest  and 
purest  of  all,  they  crucified.  These  seem  but  types. 
To-day  Eussian  prisons  are  full,  and  in  long  processions, 
men  and  women,  who,  but  for  high-minded  patriotism, 
might  have  lived  in  ease  and  luxury,  move  in  chains 


THE  PBOBLEM  OF  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE.  555 

toward  the  death-in-life  of  Siberia.  And  in  penury  and 
want,  in  neglect  and  contempt,  destitute  even  of  the 
sympathy  that  would  have  been  so  sweet,  how  many  in 
every  country  have  closed  their  eyes?    This  we  see. 

But  do  we' see  it  all  9 

In  writing  I  have  picked  up  a  newspaper.  In  it  is  a 
short  account,  evidently  translated  from  a  semi-official 
report,  of  the  execution  of  three  Nihilists  at  Kieff — the 
Prussian  subject  Brandtner,  the  unknown  man  calling 
himself  AntonofE,  and  the  nobleman  Ossinsky.  At  the 
foot  of  the  gallows  they  were  permitted  to  kiss  one  an- 
other. **Then  the  hangman  cut  the  rope,  the  surgeons 
pronounced  the  victims  dead,  the  bodies  were  buried  at 
the  foot  of  the  scaffold,  and  the  Nihilists  were  given  up 
to  eternal  oblivion."  Thus  says  the  account.  I  do  not 
believe  it.     No;  not  to  oblivion! 

I  have  in  this  inquiry  followed  the  course  of  my  own 
thought.  When,  in  mind,  I  set  out  on  it  1  had  no  theory 
to  support,  no  conclusions  to  prove.  Only,  when  I  first 
realized  the  squalid  misery  of  a  great  city,  it  appalled 
and  tormented  me,  and  would  not  let  me  rest,  for  think- 
ing of  what  caused  it  and  how  it  could  be  cured. 

But  out  of  this  inquiry  has  come  to  me  something  I 
did  not  think  to  find,  and  a  faith  that  was  dead  revives. 

The  yearning  for  a  further  life  is  natural  and  deep.  It 
grows  with  intellectual  growth,  and  perhaps  none  really 
feel  it  more  than  those  who  have  begun  to  see  how  great 
is  the  universe  and  how  infinite  are  the  vistas  which 
every  advance  in  knowledge  opens  before  us — vistas 
which  would  require  nothing  short  of  eternity  to  explore. 
But  in  the  mental  atmosphere  of  our  times,  to  the  great 
majority  of  men  on  whom  mere  creeds  have  lost  their 
hold,  it  seems  impossible  to  look  on  this  yearning  save 
as  a  vain  and  childish  hope,  arising  from  man's  egotism, 
and  for  which  there  is  not  the  slightest  ground  or  war- 


656  COKCLUSION. 

rant,  but  which,  on  the  contrary,  seems  inconsistent  with 
positive  knowledge. 

Now,  when  we  come  to  analyze  and  trace  up  the  ideas 
that  thus  destroy  the  hope  of  a  future  life,  we  shall  find 
them,  I  think,  to  have  their  source,  not  in  any  revelations 
of  physical  science,  but  in  certain  teachings  of  political 
and  social  science  which  have  deeply  permeated  thought 
in  all  directions.  They  have  their  root  in  the  doctrines, 
that  there  is  a  tendency  to  the  production  of  more  human 
beings  than  can  be  provided  for;  that  vice  and  misery 
are  the  result  of  natural  laws,  and  the  means  by  which 
advance  goes  on;  and  that  human  progress  is  by  a  slow 
race  development.  These  doctrines,  which  have  been 
generally  accepted  as  approved  truth,  do  what,  except  as 
scientific  interpretations  have  been  colored  by  them,  the 
extensions  of  physical  science  do  not  do — they  reduce 
the  individual  to  insignificance;  they  destroy  the  idea 
that  there  can  be  in  the  ordering  of  the  universe  any 
regard  for  his  existence,  or  any  recognition  of  what  we 
call  moral  qualities. 

It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  the  idea  of  human  immortal- 
ity with  the  idea  that  nature  wastes  men  by  constantly 
bringing  them  into  being  where  there  is  no  room  for 
them.  It  is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  idea  of  an  intelli- 
gent and  beneficent  Creator  with  the  belief  that  the 
wretchedness  and  degradation  which  are  the  lot  of  such 
a  large  proportion  of  human  kind  result  from  his  enact- 
ments; while  the  idea  that  man  mentally  and  physically 
is  the  result  of  slow  modifications  perpetuated  by  hered- 
ity, irresistibly  suggests  the  idea  that  it  is  the  race  life, 
not  the  individual  life,  which  is  the  object  of  human 
existence.  Thus  has  vanished  with  many  of  us,  and  is 
still  vanishing  with  more  of  us,  that  belief  which  in  the 
battles  and  ills  of  life  affords  the  strongest  support  and 
deepest  consolation. 

Now,  in  the  inquiry  through  which  we  have  passed, 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE.  557 

we  have  met  these  doctrines  and  seen  their  fallacy.  We 
have  seen  that  population  does  not  tend  to  outrun  sub- 
sistence; we  have  seen  that  the  waste  of  human  powers 
and  the  prodigality  of  human  suffering  do  not  spring 
from  natural  laws,  but  from  the  ignorance  and  selfishness 
of  men  in  refusing  to  conform  to  natural  laws.  We  have 
seen  that  human  progress  is  not  by  altering  the  nature  of 
men;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  the  nature  of  men  seems, 
generally  speaking,  always  the  same. 

Thus  the  nightmare  which  is  banishing  from  the 
modern  world  the  belief  in  a  future  life  is  destroyed. 
Not  that  all  difficulties  are  removed — for  turn  which  way 
we  may,  we  come  to  what  we  cannot  comprehend;  but 
that  difficulties  are  removed  which  seem  conclusive  and 
insuperable.     And,  thus,  hope  springs  up. 

But  this  is  not  all. 

Political  Economy  has  been  called  the  dismal  science, 
and  as  currently  taught,  is  hopeless  and  despairing.  But 
this,  as  we  have  seen,  is  solely  because  she  has  been 
degraded  and  shackled;  her  truths  dislocated;  her  har- 
monies ignored;  the  word  she  would  utter  gagged  in  her 
mouth,  and  her  protest  against  wrong  turned  into  an 
indorsement  of  injustice.  Freed,  as  I  have  tried  to  free 
her — in  her  own  proper  symmetry.  Political  Economy  ia 
radiant  with  hope. 

For  properly  understood,  the  laws  which  govern  the 
production  and  distribution  of  wealth  show  that  the  want 
and  injustice  of  the  present  social  state  are  not  necessary; 
but  that,  on  the  contrary,  a  social  state  is  possible  in 
which  poverty  would  be  unknown,  and  all  the  better 
qualities  and  higher  powers  of  human  nature  would  have 
opportunity  for  full  development. 

And,  further  than  this,  when  we  see  that  social  de- 
velopment is  governed  neither  by  a  Special  Providence 
nor  by  a  merciless  fate,  but  by  law,  at  once  unchangeable 


558  C0NCLU8I0K. 

and  beneficent;  when  we  see  that  human  will  is  the  great 
factor,  and  that  taking  men  in  the  aggregate,  their  con- 
dition is  as  they  make  it;  when  we  see  that  economic 
law  and  moral  law  are  essentially  one,  and  that  the  truth 
which  the  intellect  grasps  after  toilsome  effort  is  but 
that  which  the  moral  sense  reaches  by  a  quick  intuition, 
a  flood  of  light  breaks  in  upon  the  problem  of  individual 
life.  These  countless  millions  like  ourselves,  who  on 
this  earth  of  ours  have  passed  and  still  are  passing,  with 
their  joys  and  sorrows,  their  toil  and  their  striving,  their 
aspirations  and  their  fears,  their  strong  perceptions  of 
things  deeper  than  sense,  their  common  feelings  which 
form  the  basis  even  of  the  most  divergent  creeds — their 
little  lives  do  not  seem  so  much  like  meaningless  waste. 

The  great  fact  which  Science  in  all  her  branches  shows 
is  the  universality  of  law.  Wherever  he  can  trace  it, 
whether  in  the  fall  of  an  apple  or  in  the  revolution  of 
binary  suns,  the  astronomer  sees  the  working  of  the 
same  law,  which  operates  in  the  minutest  divisions  in 
which  we  may  distinguish  space,  as  it  does  in  the  im- 
measurable distances  with  which  his  science  deals.  Out 
of  that  which  lies  beyond  his  telescope  comes  a  moving 
body  and  again  it  disappears.  So  far  as  he  can  trace  its 
course  the  law  is  ignored.  Does  he  say  that  this  is  an 
exception?  On  the  contrary,  he  says  that  this  is  merely 
a  part  of  its  orbit  that  he  has  seen;  that  beyond  the 
reach  of  his  telescope  the  law  holds  good.  He  makes  his 
calculations,  and  after  centuries  they  are  proved. 

Now,  if  we  trace  out  the  laws  which  govern  human 
life  in  society,  we  find  that  in  the  largest  as  in  the  small- 
est community,  they  are  the  same.  We  find  that  what 
seem  at  first  sight  like  divergences  and  exceptions  are 
but  manifestations  of  the  same  principles.  And  we  find 
that  everywhere  we  can  trace  it,  the  social  law  runs  into 
and  conforms  with  the  moral  law;  that  in  the  life  of  a 
community,  justice  infallibly  brings  its  reward  and  in- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE.  659 

justice  its  punishment.  But  this  we  cannot  see  in  in- 
dividual life.  If  we  look  merely  at  individual  life  we 
cannot  see  that  the  laws  of  the  universe  have  the  slight- 
est relation  to  good  or  bad,  to  right  or  wrong,  to  just  or 
unjust.*  Shall  we  then  say  that  the  law  which  is  mani- 
fest in  social  life  is  not  true  of  individual  life?  It  is  not 
scientific  to  say  so.  We  would  not  say  so  in  reference  to 
anything  else.  Shall  we  not  rather  say  this  simply  proves 
that  we  do  not  see  the  whole  of  individual  life? 

The  laws  which  Political  Economy  discovers,  like  the 
facts  and  relations  of  physical  nature,  harmonize  with 
what  seems  to  be  the  law  of  mental  development — not  a 
necess{\ry  and  involuntary  progress,  but  a  progress  in 
which  the  human  will  is  an  initiatory  force.  But  in  life, 
as  we  are  cognizant  of  it,  mental  development  can  go 
but  a  little  way.  The  mind  hardly  begins  to  awake  ere 
the  bodily  powers  decline — it  but  becomes  dimly  con- 
scious of  the  vast  fields  before  it,  but  begins  to  learn  and 
use  its  strength,  to  recognize  relations  and  extend  its 
sympathies,  when,  with  the  death  of  the  body,  it  passes 
away.  Unless  there  is  something  more,  there  seems  here 
a  break,  a  failure.  Whether  it  be  a  Humboldt  or  a 
Herschel,  a  Moses  who  looks  from  Pisgah,  a  Joshua  who 
leads  the  host,  or  one  of  those  sweet  and  patient  souls 
who  in  narrow  circles  live  radiant  lives,  there  seems,  if 

*  Let  us  not  delude  our  children.  If  for  no  other  reason  than  for 
that  which  Plato  gives,  that  when  they  come  to  discard  that  which 
we  told  them  as  pious  fable  they  will  also  discard  that  which  we 
told  them  as  truth.  The  virtues  which  relate  to  self  do  generally 
bring  their  reward.  Either  a  merchant  or  a  thief  will  be  more  suc- 
cessful if  he  be  sober,  prudent,  and  faithful  to  his  promises;  but  as 
to  the  virtues  which  do  not  relate  to  self — 

"  It  seems  a  story  from  the  world  of  spirits, 
When  any  one  obtains  that  which  he  merits. 
Or  any  merits  that  which  he  obtains." 


560  coNCLusioir. 

mind  and  character  here  developed  can  go  no  further,  a 
purposelessness  inconsistent  with  what  we  can  see  of  the 
linked  sequence  of  the  universe. 

By  a  fundamental  law  of  our  minds — the  law,  in  fact, 
upon  which  Political  Economy  relies  in  all  her  deduc- 
tions— we  cannot  conceive  of  a  means  without  an  end;  a 
contrivance  without  an  object.  Now,  to  all  nature,  so 
far  as  we  come  in  contact  with  it  in  this  world,  the  sup- 
port and  employment  of  the  intelligence  that  is  in  man 
furnishes  such  an  end  and  object.  But  unless  man  him- 
self may  rise  to  or  bring  forth  something  higher,  his 
existence  is  unintelligible.  So  strong  is  this  metaphys- 
ical necessity  that  those  who  deny  to  the  individual  any- 
thing more  than  this  life  are  compelled  to  transfer  the 
idea  of  perfectibility  to  the  race.  But  as  we  have  seen, 
and  the  argument  could  have  been  made  much  more 
complete,  there  is  nothing  whatever  to  show  any  essential 
race  improvement.  Human  progress  is  not  the  improve- 
ment of  human  nature.  The  advances  in  which  civiliza- 
tion consists  are  not  secured  in  the  constitution  of  man, 
but  in  the  constitution  of  society.  They  are  thus  not 
fixed  and  permanent,  but  may  at  any  time  be  lost — nay, 
are  constantly  tending  to  be  lost.  And  further  than 
this,  if  human  life  does  not  continue  beyond  what  we  see 
of  it  here,  then  we  are  confronted,  with  regard  to  the 
race,  with  the  same  diflBculty  as  with  the  individual! 
For  it  is  as  certain  that  the  race  must  die  as  it  is  that  the 
individual  must  die.  We  know  that  there  have  been 
geologic  conditions  under  which  human  life  was  impossi- 
ble on  this  earth.  We  know  that  they  must  return 
again.  Even  now,  as  the  earth  circles  on  her  appointed 
orbit,  the  northern  ice  cap  slowly  thickens,  and  the  time 
gradually  approaches,  when  its  glaciers  will  flow  again, 
and  austral  seas,  sweeping  northward,  bury  the  seats  of 
present  civilization  under  ocean  wastes,  as  it  may  be  they 
now  bury  what  was  once  as  high  a  civilization  as  our  own. 


THE  PEOBLBM  OP  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE.  561 

And  beyond  these  periods,  science  discerns  a  dead  earth, 
an  exhausted  sun — a  time  when,  clashing  together,  the 
solar  system  shall  resolve  itself  into  a  gaseous  form, 
again  to  begin  immeasurable  mutations. 

What  then  is  the  meaning  of  life — of  life  absolutely 
and  inevitably  bounded  by  death  ?  To  me  it  seems  in- 
telligible only  as  the  avenue  and  vestibule  to  another 
life.  And  its  facts  seem  explainable  only  upon  a  theory 
which  cannot  be  expressed  but  in  myth  and  symbol,  and 
which,  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  the  myths  and  sym- 
bols in  which  men  have  tried  to  portray  their  deepest 
perceptions  do  in  some  form  express. 

The  scriptures  of  the  men  who  have  been  and  gone — 
the  Bibles,  the  Zend  Avestas,  the  Vedas,  the  Dhamma- 
padas,  and  the  Korans;  the  esoteric  doctrines  of  old  phi- 
losophies, the  inner  meaning  of  grotesque  religions,  the 
dogmatic  constitutions  of  Ecumenical  Councils,  the  preach- 
ings of  Foxes,  and  Wesleys,  and  Savonarolas,  the  tradi- 
tions of  red  Indians,  and  beliefs  of  black  savages,  have  a 
heart  and  core  in  which  they  agree — a  something  which 
seems  like  the  variously  distorted  apprehensions  of  a 
primary  truth.  And  out  of  the  chain  of  thought  we  have 
been  following  there  seems  vaguely  to  rise  a  glimpse  of 
what  they  vaguely  saw — a  shadowy  gleam  of  ultimate 
relations,  the  endeavor  to  express  which  inevitably  falls 
into  type  and  allegory.  A  garden  in  which  are  set  the 
trees  of  good  and  evil.  A  vineyard  in  which  there  is 
the  Master's  work  to  do.  A  passage — from  life  behind  to 
life  beyond.  A  trial  and  a  struggle,  of  which  we  cannot 
see  the  end. 

Look  around  to-day. 

Lo!  here,  now,  in  our  civilized  society,  the  old  allego- 
ries yet  have  a  meaning,  the  old  myths  are  still  true. 
Into  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  yet  often  leads 
the  path  of  duty,  through  the  streets  of  Vanity  Fair 


562  OONCLUSIOH. 

walk  Christian  and  Faithful,  and  on  Greatheart*s  armor 
ring  the  clanging  hlows.  Ormuzd  still  fights  with  Ahri- 
man — the  Prince  of  Light  with  the  Powers  of  Darkness. 
He  who  will  hear,  to  him  the  clarions  of  the  battle  call. 

How  they  call,  and  call,  and  call,  till  the  heart  swells 
that  hears  them!  Strong  soul  and  high  endeavor,  the 
world  needs  them  now.  Beauty  still  lies  imprisoned,  and 
iron  wheels  go  over  the  good  and  true  and  beautiful  that 
might  spring  from  human  lives. 

And  they  who  fight  with  Ormuzd,  though  they  may 
not  know  each  other — somewhere,  sometime,  will  the 
muster  roll  be  called. 

Though  Truth  and  Right  seem  often  overborne,  we 
may  not  see  it  all.  How  can  we  see  it  all?  All  that  is 
passing,  even  here,  we  cannot  tell.  The  vibrations  of 
matter  which  give  the  sensations  of  light  and  color  become 
to  us  indistinguishable  when  they  pass  a  certain  point.  It 
is  only  within  a*  like  range  that  we  have  cognizance  of 
sounds.  Even  animals  have  senses  which  we  have  not. 
And,  here?  Compared  with  the  solar  system  our  earth 
is  but  an  indistinguishable  speck;  and  the  solar  system 
itself  shrivels  into  nothingness  when  gauged  with  the 
star  depths.  Shall  we  say  that  what  passes  from  our 
sight  passes  into  oblivion?  No;  not  into  oblivion.  Far, 
far  beyond  our  ken  the  eternal  laws  must  hold  their  sway. 

The  hope  that  rises  is  the  heart  of  all  religions  1  The 
poets  have  sung  it,  the  seers  have  told  it,  and  in  its  deep- 
est pulses  the  heart  of  man  throbs  responsive  to  its  truth. 
This,  that  Plutarch  said,  is  what  in  all  times  and  in  all 
tongues  has  been  said  by  the  pure  hearted  and  strong 
sighted,  who,  standing  as  it  were,  on  the  mountain  tops 
of  thought  and  looking  over  the  shadowy  ocean,  have 
beheld  the  loom  of  land: 

'*i/e»*5  souls f  encompassed  here  with  bodies  and  pas* 


THE  PKOBLEM  OF  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE.  563 

sions,  have  no  communication  with  God,  except  what  they 
can  reach  to  in  conception  only,  by  means  of  philosophy,  as 
by  a  kind  of  an  obscure  dream.  But  when  they  are  loosed 
from  the  body,  and  removed  into  the  unseen,  invisible, 
impassable,  and  pure  region,  this  God  is  then  their  leader 
and  king;  they  there,  as  it  were,  hanging  on  him  wholly, 
and  beholding  without  weariness  and  passionately  affecting 
thai  beauty  which  cannot  be  expressed  or  uttered  by  men.'* 


INDEX. 


Bagehot,  Walter,  arrest  of  civilization, 
480-481 ;  why  barbarians  waste  away, 
497-498. 

Bastiat,  cause  of  interest,  176-186. 

Bisset,  Andrew,  knight's  service, 
381n. 

Buckle,  assumes  current  doctrine  of 
wages,  18;  on  Malthus,  ft2-93,  100; 
interest  and  profits,  158;  relation  be- 
tween rent,  wages  and  interest,  170. 

Caimes,  J.  E.,  high  wages  and  interest 
in  new  countries,  20-23. 

California,  economic  principles  exem- 
plified in,  19-20,  61-03. 78, 144-146, 174, 
255-256,  271-275,  290-391,  344,  383-385, 
392,  398,  434-435. 

Capital,  current  doctrine  of  its  relation 
to  wages,  17-18;  idle  in  industrial 
depressions,  21;  theory  that  wages 
are  drawn  from,  20-23;  deductions 
from  this  theory,  24-25;  varying 
definitions  of,  32-34;  difficulties  be- 
setting use  of  term,  36-37;  ex- 
clusions of  term,  37-38:  distinguished 
from  wealth,  41-47, 71-72;  used  in  two 
senses,  56-57;  definitions  of  Smith, 
Ricardo,  McCulloch,  and  MiU  com- 
pared, 41-45;  wages  not  drawn  from, 
23-29,  49-69;  does  not  limit  industry, 
26-29,  57-58,  60-86;  does  not  main- 
tain laborers,  70-78;  modes  in  which 
it  aids  labor,  79,  186-188,  195-196; 
real  functions  of  79-87;  may  limit 
form  and  productiveness  of  industry, 
80-82;  apparent  want  of  generally 
due  to  some  other  want,  82-85; 
limited  by  requirements  of  produc- 
tion, 85-86;  poverty  not  due  to 
scarcity  of,  8.5-86;  not  necessary  to 
production,  103-164;  a  form  of  labor, 
164, 198, 203;  its  essence,  179;  spurious, 
189-194;  not  fixed  in  quantity,  195;  if 
the  only  active  factor  in  produc- 
tion, 201-202;  its  profits  as  affected 
by  wages,  308-309;  wastes  when  not 
used,  311;  invested  upon  j>ossessory 
titles,  385. 

Carey,  Henry  C,  on  capital,  34;  rent, 
225. 

China,  cause  of  poverty  and  famine, 
121-122;  civilization,  480-481. 

Civilization,  what,  475-476;  prevailing 
beUef  as  to  progress  of,  476-479; 
arrest  of,  479-486;  differences  in, 
487-502;  its  law,  503-523;  retro- 
gression, 482-486,  536-537;  to  endure 
must  be  based  on  justice,  543-548; 
character  of  European,  518,  526. 

Civilization,  modern,  its  riddle,  10; 
has  not  improved  condition  of  the 
lowest  class,  281-284;  development 
of,  373-382:  superiority,  519-520;  may 
decline,  524-628;  indications  of  ret- 
rogression, 537-540;  its  possibilities, 
452-469,  549. 

Communities,   industrial,   extent  of, 


Confucius,  descendants  of,  111-112. 

Consumption,  supported  by  contem- 
poraneous production,  72-75;  de- 
mand for  determines  production, 
75-76;  only  relative  term,  183;  in- 
crease of  shows  increasing  produc- 
tion, 149. 

Co-operation,  not  a  remedy  for  pov- 
erty. 314-317;  but  will  follow  from 
the  extirpation  of  poverty,  452-469. 

Debts,  pubUc.  not  capital,  189-190; 
origin  and  abolition,  381-383,  453. 

Demand,  not  fixed,  243,  245-247.  (See 
Supply  and  Demand.) 

Deutsch,  Emanuel,  human  nature,  495. 

Development,  concentration  the  order 
of.  325. 

Development  Philosophy,  relations  to 
Malthusianism,  100-101 ;  insufficiency 
of,  473-486. 

Discount,  high  rates  of,  not  interest, 
21n. 

Distribution,  terms  of  exclusive,  37, 
38, 162;  laws  of,  153-222;  their  neces- 
saiy  relation,  160-164;  as  currently 
taught,  160-161;  contrasted  with  true 
laws,  218;  equality  of,  450-151. 

Education  no  remedy  for  poverty,  305- 
306. 

Exchange,  functions  of,  27-29,  76-77; 
a  part  of  production,  47;  brings  in- 
crease, 182-183,  186-187;  extends 
with  progress  of  civilization,  197; 
promotes  civilization,  508-509. 

Exchanges,  credit  in,  276-277;  effect  of 
wages  on  international,  309-310. 

Fawcett,  Prof.,  Indian  exj)enditures, 
120n,;  value  of  land  in  England.  287. 

Fawcett.  Mrs.,  laborers  maintained 
by  capital,  70;  land  tax,  421. 

Feudal  system,  recognition  of  common 
rights  to  land,  372-375,  381,  infeudar 
tion,  396-397. 

Fortunes,  great,  193-194  386-387,  451. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  his  economy, 
303. 

Glovemment,  improvements  in  increase 
production,  2^,  252;  will  not  relieve 
poverty,  298-301;  simplification  and 
change  of  character,  452^9;  tend- 
ency to  repubUcanism,  526-527; 
transition  to  despotism,  301, 527-528. 

Guizot,  Europe  after  fall  of  Koman 
Empire,  372-373;  the  question  that 
arises  from  a  review  of  civilization, 
553. 

Hyndman,  H.  M.,  Indian  famine,  119- 
120. 

Improvements  in  the  arts,  effect  upon 
distribution,  242-252;  in  habits  of  in- 
dustry and  thrift,  will  not  relieve 
poverty,  301-308;  upion  land,  their 
value  separable  from  land  values, 
341-342,  422-423. 

India,  cause  of  poverty  and  famine^ 
114-121;  civilization,  480,  481,  497. 

Industrial  depressions,  extent  and  sig- 


566 


INDEX. 


niflcance,  5-6,  537-538;  conflicting 
opinions  as  to  cause,  10-11;  their 
cause  and  course,  261-279;  connection 
with  railroad  building,  273-274;  pass- 
ing away,  279. 

Industry,  not  limited  by  capital,  26,  56- 
57;  may  be  limited  in  form  and  pro- 
ductiveness by  capital,  80-86. 

Interest.conf  usion  of  term  with  profits, 
156-163;  proper  signification,  161-162; 
variations  m,  174;  cause  of,  174- 
188;  justice  of,  187;  profits  mistaken 
for,  189-194;  law  of,  195-203;  normal 
point  of,  198-199;  formulation  of  law, 
202. 

Interest  and  wages,evident  connection, 
19-21;  relation,  171-172,199-203,218; 
why  higher  in  new  countries,  221. 

Inventions,  labor-saving,  faihire  to  re- 
lieve poverty,  3-5;  advantage  of  goes 
primarily  to  labor,  179,  195-196;  ex- 
cept when  not  diffused,  251 ;  effect  of, 
242-252;  brought  forth  by  freedom, 
521-523. 

Ireland,  cause  of  poverty  and  famine, 
123-128;  effect  of  introduction  of 
potato,  303-304. 

Labor,  purpose  of,  27-29,  244-246,  396; 
meanmg  of  term,  .37-38;  produces 
wages,  27-29,  49-69;  precedes  wages, 
55^;  employs  capital,  163, 195;  elimi- 
nated from  production,  201-202;  pro- 
ductiveness varies  with  natural 
powers,205;  no  fixed  barriers  between 
occupations,  210-211 ;  value  of  reduced 
by  value  of  land,  221-222;  supply  and 
demand,  368-269;  land  necessary  to, 
270,  292-294;  cause  of  want  of  em- 
ployment, 271-272;  family,  301;  com- 
bination, 308-314;  only  rightful  basis 
of  property,  332-335;  efficiency  in- 
creases with  wages,  441-442;  not  in 
itself  repugnant,  465. 

Labor  and  Capital,  different  forms  of 
same  tiling,  163-164, 198,  203;  whence 
idea  of  their  conflict  arises,  189, 194; 
harmony  of  interests,  198-203. 

Laborers,  not  maintained  by  capital, 
70-78;  where  land  is  monopwlized, 
have  no  interest  in  increase  of  pro- 
ductive power,  281 ;  made  more  de- 
pendent by  civilization,  281-284;  or- 
ganizations of,  308-314;  condition  not 
improved  by  division  of  land,  321- 
325;  their  enslavement  the  ultimate 
result  of  private  property  in  land, 
345-355. 

Land,  meaning  of  term,  37;  value  of  is 
not  wealth,  39,  165-166;  diminishing 
productiveness  cited  in  support  Mat- 
thusian  theory,  97;  how  far  true, 
133-134,  228-241;  maintenance  of 
prices,  274-275;  estimated  value  of  in 
England,  287;  effects  of  monopoliza- 
tion in  England,  288-289;  relation  of 
man  to,  292-294 ;  division  of  will  not  re- 
lieve poverty,  319-325;  tendency  to 
concentration  in  ownership,  319-321 ; 
necessitjr  for  abolishing  private 
ownership,     326-327;     injustice    of 


private  property  in,  331-392;  absurd- 
ity of  legal  titles  to,  340,  342-344; 
aristocracy  and  serfdom  spring  from 
ownership  of,  294,  348-355,  514-515; 
purchase  by  government,  357-358; 
development  of  private  ownership, 
866-382;  commons,  375-376;  tenures 
in  the  United  States,  383-392;  private 
ownership  inconsistent  with  best  use, 
395-400;  how  may  be  made  common 
property,  401-427;  effects  of  this, 
452-469;  increase  of  productiveness 
from  better  distribution  of  popula- 
tion, 449n.. 
Land  owners,  power  of,  167,  292-394, 
345-355;  ease  of  their  combination, 
313-313;  their  claims  to  compensa- 
tion, 356-365;  will  not  be  injured  by 
confiscation  of  rent,  445-469. 
Latimer,  Hugh,  increase  of  rent  in  Six- 
teenth Century,  288-289. 
Laveleye,  M.  de,  on  small  land  hold- 
ings, 331-325;  primitive  land  tenures, 
369;  Teutonic  equality,  372. 
Lawyers,  confusions  in  their  terminol- 
ogy, 335-3:36;  their  inculcation  of 
the  sacredness  of  property,  366;  in- 
fluence on  land  tenures,  370rt. 
Life,  quantity  of  human,  109-110; 
limits  to,  129-134;  reproductive  power 
gives  increase  to  capital,  181;  balance 
of,  196-197;  meaning  of,  561. 
Macaulay,  English  rule  in  India,  116; 

future  of  United  States,  534. 
Machinery.  (See  Inventions.) 
McCuUocn,  on  wages  fund,  22-23/i; 
definition  of  capital,  33-34;  compared, 
42-44;  principle  of  increase,  101; 
Irish  poverty  and  distre&s,  125-126; 
rent,  ^3;  tax  on  rent,  420,  422-425. 
Malthus,  purpose  of  Essay  on  Popula- 
tion, 98;  its  absurdities,  104-105,  137; 
his  other  works  treated  with  con- 
tempt, 105-106n;  fall  of  wages  in 
Sixteenth  Century,  288;  cause  of  his 
popularity,  98-100,  33&-337n. 
Maltnusian  Theory,  stated,  examined 
and  disproved,  91-150;  as  stated  by 
Malthus,  93-94;  as  stated  by  Mill, 
94-95,  140-141 ;  in  its  strongest  form, 
95;  its  triumph  and  the  causes, 
95-96;  harmonizes  with  ideas  of 
working  classes,  98;  defends  in- 
equality and  discourages  reform, 
98-99,  140-141,  336-337n;  its  extension 
in  development  philosophy,  101; 
now  generally  accepted,  101-102; 
its  illegitimate  inferences,  103-139; 
facts  which  disprove  it,  140-150; 
its  support  from  doctrine  of  rent, 
97,  132-133,  228-229;  effects  pred- 
icated of  increase  of  population 
result  from  improvements  in  the 
arts,  242-252;  the  ultimate  defense 
of  property  in  land,  336-337». 
Man  more  ttian  an  animal,  129-131, 
134-136,  307,  464,  473-475,  492-493; 
his  power  to  avail  himself  of  the 
reproductive  forces  of  nature,  131- 
132;  primary  right  and  power,  332- 


IKDEX. 


567 


S33;  desire  for  approbation,  456-458; 
selfishness  not  the  master  motive, 
46(M61;  his  infinite  desires,  134-136, 
S43,  245-air,   464-4C5,    503;    how  im- 

J)rove8,  475;  idea  of  national  or  race 
ife,  4K-486;  cause  of  differences 
and  progress,  487-502:  hereditaiy 
transmission,  495^-502;  social  in  his 
nature,  506. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  definition  of  capital 
34,  71-72;  industry  limited  by  capital, 
5&-57n,  70-71;  Malthusian  doctrine, 
94-95.  Ill;  effect  of  unrestricted  in^ 
crease  of  population,  140-141;  con- 
fusion as  to  profits  and  interest,  158 
law  of  rent,  168;  wages,  213;  govern 
ment  resumption  of  increase  of  land 
values,  358-360;  influence  of  Malthu- 
sianism,  360-361;  tax  on  rent,  430- 
421. 

Money,  when  capital,  45;  in  hands  of 
consumer.  46n;  confounded  with 
wealth,  60-61;  lack  of  commodities 
spoken  of  as  lack  of,  266. 

Monopolies,  profits  of,  191-194;  cause 
of  certain,  408-409. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  ejectments  of  cot- 
tagers, 289. 

Nature,  its  reproductive  power,  180- 
182;  utilization  of  its  variations, 
183-ias,  185-187;  equation  between 
reproduction  and  destruction,  196- 
19*;  impartiality  of,  333-334. 

Nicholson,  N.  A.,  on  capital,  35. 

Nightingale,  Florence,  causes  of 
famine  in  India,  118-119, 119n,  laOre. 

Perry,  Arthtu-  Latham,  on  capital,  34; 
rent,  225. 

Political  Economy,  its  failure,  its  na- 
ture and  its  methods,  10-13; 
doctrines  based  upon  the  theory 
that  wa^es  are  drawn  from  capital 
24-^;  miportance  of  definitions, 
80-36;  its  terms  abstract  terms,  47; 
confusion  of  standard  treatises, 
56-57.  158-161,  218;  the  erroneous 
standpoint  which  its  investigators 
have  adopted,  162-163;  its  funda- 
mental principle,  12,  204,  217,  560; 
writers  on,  stumbling  over  law  of 
wages,  215-216;  compared  with 
astronomy,  219-220;  deals  with  ^n- 
eral  tendencies,  278-279;  admissions 
in  standard  works  as  to  property 
in  land,  356-358;  principles  not 
pushed  to  logical  conclusions,  421; 
the  Physiocrats,  421-422;  unison 
with  moral  truth,  230,  484;  its  hope- 
fulness, 557;  effect  on  religious 
ideas,  555-556. 

Population  and  Subsistence,  91-150. 
(See  Malthusian  Theory.) 

Population,  inferences  as  to  in- 
crease, 103-104;  of  world,  no  evi- 
dence of  increase  in,  107-110;  pres- 
ent, 113n;  increase  of  descendants 
not  increase  of,  112;  only  limited  by 
space,  133-134;  real  law  of  increase, 
137-139;    effect  of    increase    upon 


production  and  distribution,  228^ 
241;  increase  of  increases  wealth, 
140-150;  puts  land  to  intenser  uses. 
320;  increase  in  United  States,  890. 

Poverty,  its  connection  with  material 
progress,  6-10;  failure  to  explain 
this,  10-11;  where  deepest,  222;  why 
it  accompanies  progress,  280-294; 
remedy  for,  326-328;  springs  from 
injustice,  338-339,541-542;  its  effects, 
354,  456^64. 

Price,  not  measured  by  the  necessity 
of  the  buyer,  185:  equation  of 
equalizes  reward  of  labor,  204. 

Production,  same  principles  obvious  in 
complex  as  in  simple  forms,  26-29 
factors  of ,  87,  162,  203,  270,  292-294 
includes  exchange,  47;  the  im- 
mediate result  of  labor,  64-67; 
directed  by  demand  for  consumption, 
TO;  functions  of  capital  in,  79-87, 162- 
164;  simple  modes  of  sometimes 
most  eflQcient,  84-85;  only  relative 
term,  133;  increas€)d  shown  by  in- 
creased consumption,  149;  meaning 
of  the  term,  155;  utilizes  reproduc- 
tive forces,  179-182;  time  an  element 
in,  180-185;  the  modes  of,  186;  re- 
course to  lower  points  does  not  in- 
volve diminution  of,  229-282;  tend- 
ency to  large  scale,  320-321,  325, 
531-532;  susceptible  of  enormous  in- 
crease, 431-434,  466,  547. 

Profits,  meaning  of  the  term  and  con- 
fusions in  its  use,  158-162,  189-194. 

Progress,  human,  current  theory  of 
considered,  473-486;  in  what  it  con- 
sists, 487-502;  its  law,  503-523,  541- 
549;  retrogression,  524-540. 

Progress,  material,  connection  with 
poverty,  7-11, 222;  in  what  it  consists, 
227;  effects  upon  distribution  or 
wealth,  228-241 :  effect  of  expectation 
raised  by,  253-258;  how  it  results  in 
industrial  depressions,  261-279;  why 
it  produces  poverty.  280-294. 

Property,  basis  of,  331-334,  340-842; 
erroneous  categories  of,  335;  deriva- 
tion of  distinction  between  real  and 
personal,  377;  private  in  land  not 
necessary  to  use  of  land,  395-400; 
idea  of  transferred  to  land,  514-515. 

Protection,  its  fallacies  have  their 
root  in  belief  as  to  wages,  19;  effect 
on  agriculturists,  447-449;  abolition 
by  England,  effect  of,  252;  how  pro- 
tective taxes  fall,  447-448. 
guesnay,  his  doctrine,  422-423,  431. 
ent,  bearing  upon  MalthuBian  theory, 
96-98,  132^-134,  228-241,  242-252;  mean- 
ing of  the  term,  165;  arises  from 
monopoly,  166;  law  of,  168-170;  its 
corollaries,  171,  217-218;  effect  of 
their  recognition,  171-172;  as  related 
to  interest,  201-203;  as  related  to 
wages,  204-216;  advance  of  explains 
why  wages  and  interest  do  not  ad- 
vance, 221-222;  increased  by  increase 
of  population,  228-241 ;  increased  by 


568 


IKDEX, 


improvements,  242-252;  by  specula- 
tion, 253-258;  speculative  advance 
in  the  cause  of  industrial  depres- 
sions, 261-279;  advance  in  explains 
the  persistence  of  poverty,  a80-2&4 ; 
increase  of  not  prevented  by  tenant 
right,  322;  or  by  division  of  land, 
324-325;  serf,  generally  fixed,  353; 
confiscation  of  future  increase,  357- 
359;  a  continuous  robbery,  363-363; 
feudal  rents,  37iJ-;i75;  their  abolition, 
37&-381 ;  their  present  value,  381-382; 
rent  now  taken  by  the  State,  397- 
400 ;  State  appropriation  of,  401-427, 
514-515;  taxes  on.  406-419;  effects  of 
thus  appropriating,  431^86. 
Eeade,  Winwood,  Martyrdom  of  Man, 

478n,  479n. 
Religion,  necessary  to  socialism,  318; 
promotive  of  civilization,  509,  519- 
520;   Hebrew,  effects  on  race,  495- 
496;  retrogression  in,  536-587;  change 
going  on,  540;  animosities  created  by, 
507n;  consensus  of,  560-561. 
Ricardo,  definition  of  capital,  33;    in- 
ference as  to  population,  71 ;  emmci- 
ation   of  law  of  rent,  168;  narrow 
view  of,  168-169,  225;    tax  on  rent, 
420. 
Royce,    Samuel,    Deterioration    and 

Race  Education,  538n. 
Slaveholders  of  the   South,  their  view 

of  abolition,  351-353. 
Slavery,  cliattel,  comparatively  trivial 
effects  of,  347;  modifying  influence 
353-354;     not    truly     abolished     in 
United  States,  .355,  392;   never  aided 
progress,  522-523. 
Smith,  Adam,  definition  of  capital,  32- 
33,  36-42,  44,  45-46;  recognizes  truth 
as   to  source   of   wages  and   then 
abandons  it,  50;  influence  of  Malthu- 
sian  theory  upon,  92;    profits,  157; 
how  economists  have  followed  him, 
159;  diffei-ences  of  wages  in  different 
occupations,     207-208,    209-210;    his 
failure  to  appreciate  the  laws  of  dis- 
tribution, 215;  taxation,  410-419. 
Socialism,  its  ends  and  means,  317-319; 
practical    realization  of    its    ideal, 
431-469. 
Social  organization  and  life,  possible 

changes,  452-469. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  compensation  of 
land  owners,  367-358,  363;  pubUc 
ownership  of  land,  402;  evolution, 
478,  485;  human  progress,  478-479; 
social  differences,  502. 
Strikes,  310-314. 

Subsistence,  population  and,  91-150; 
increases  with  population,  129-133; 
cannot  be  exhausted,  133-134;  in- 
cluded in  wealth,  142,  244;  demand 
for  not  fixed,  245-246.  (See  Malthu- 
sian  Theory.) 
Supply  and  demand,  of  labor,  208-209; 
relative  terms.  266-267;  as  affected 
by  wages,  308-310. 
Swift,  Dean,  his  Modest  ProxKisal,  126. 


Taxation,  eliminated  In  considering 
distribution,  155;  reduction  of  wifl 
not  relieve  poverty,  297-301;  con- 
sidered, 406-427;  canons  of,  406; 
effect  upon  production,  406-412; 
ease  and  cheapness  in  collection, 
412-114;  certainty,  414-416;  equality 
of,  416-419;  opinions  on,  42(M23; 
objections  to  tax  on  rent,  422-427; 
cause  of  manifold  taxation,  425-427; 
how  taxation  falls  on  agriculturists, 
447-450;  effects  of  confiscating  rent 
by  taxation,  481-469. 
Tennant,  Rev.  Wm.,  cause  of  famine 

in  India,  115-116. 
Thornton,  Wm.,  on  wage  fund,  18n; 

on  capital,  35. 
Values,  equation  of,  196-197. 
Wages,  cuiTent  doctrine,  17;  it  coin- 
cides  with  vulgar  opinion,  18;  but  la 
inconsistent  with  facts.  19-22;  genesis 
of  cvurent  theory,  22;  difference 
between  it  and  that  herein  advanced, 
23-25;  not  drawn  from  capital  but 
produced  by  labor,  23,  25-29,  49-69; 
meaning  of  the  term,  31-32;  always 
subsequent  to  labor,  56-58;  fallacy 
of  the  assumption  that  they  are 
drawn  from  capital,  56-57;  for  serv- 
ices, 59n;  connection  between  cur- 
rent doctrine  and  Malthusian  theory, 
92-95,  96-97;  confusion  of  terms  pro- 
duced by  current  theory,  159;  rate 
of,  204;  law  of,  204-216;  formulated, 
213;  in  different  occupations,  207- 
212;  as  quantity  and  as  proportion, 
216;  not  increased  by  material  prog- 
ress, 303-304;  minimum  fixed  by 
standard  of  comfort,  303;  effect  of 
increase  or  decrease  on  employere, 
308-809;  eauilibrium  of,  310-811;  not 
increased  by  division  of  land,  323- 
325;  why  they  tend  to  wages  of 
slavery,  846;  efiiciency  of  labor  in- 
creases with,  442. 
Wages  and  Interest,  high  or  low  to- 
gether, 19-22;  current  explanation, 
19;  Caime's  explanation,  20-22; 
true  explanation,  170-172,  199-203, 
221;  foiTOulated,  218. 
Wages  of  Superintendence,  159;   used 

to  include  profits  of  monopoly,  191. 
Walker,  Amasa,  capital,  35. 
Walker,     Prof.    F.    A.,  wages,    18n; 

capital,  35. 
Wayland,      Professor,    definition     of 

capital,  34. 
Wealth,  increase  of  not  generally 
shared,  8-9;  meaning  of  tei-m,  38- 
40;  interchangeabihty  of,  47-48,  142, 
181-182,  ^4-247;  confounded  with 
money,  60-61 ;  increases  with  popu- 
lation, 141-150;  accumulated.  147-149; 
laws  of  distribution,  153-216;  formu- 
lated. 218;  nature  of,  147-149,  180, 
205;  political  effects  ofimequal  dis- 
tribution, 300,  527-5,35;  effects  of 
just  distribution,  438-444,  450-451, 
452-4S5. 


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